Matt Damon Turned Down Playing Two-Face In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight
Matt Damon is the king of missed opportunities. There isn't anyone quite like him — the actor turned down a role in the biggest film in the world and perhaps the biggest payday in history when he refused to star in "Avatar," James Cameron's sci-fi magnum opus. Interestingly — "Avatar" isn't the only significant opportunity Matt Damon missed out on. The actor also walked away from award-winning films such as Tom McCarthy's best-picture winner "Spotlight" (Mark Ruffalo went on to star in the role) and Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," and that's not all. Damon also turned down the chance to join the ranks of Batman's memorable rogues' gallery.
The "Good Will Hunting" star was offered a role in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" as Harvey Dent (who went on to become the supervillain Two-Face) but Damon had already committed to filming another movie at the time. The role eventually went to Aaron Eckhart.
'There was some other big movie'
There's no doubt Aaron Eckhart's performance as the hot-shot Gotham district attorney was terrific. He was Gotham's beacon of hope and lived a believable character arc that led him to leave behind his good-guy reputation to adopt his supervillain persona. The character defined the line between good and evil, and it would've been something to see Matt Damon's interpretation of it. Unfortunately, the actor had scheduling conflicts with a big project he was headlining and couldn't take up the role.
In an interview with The Playlist, Damon revisited the story:
"Well, 'Dark Knight' was a small role that I was offered ... It wasn't Heath or Christian's part ... There was some other big movie, some big part that I was doing where I was like, 'Well, I can't play Harvey Dent, this is a relatively small role, but I am headlining this other thing.' But you gotta be sanguine about it and go, 'It all works out.' At this point, I passed on the biggest payday in the history [of cinema] accidentally, so I could never do worse financially, I could never commit a worse financial error."
'I wanted to be on that ride'
While Matt Damon missed out on an opportunity to work with Christopher Nolan — that changed when he starred in a minor role in "Interstellar," a few years later. The actor takes the missed opportunity in stride: as long as he had the chance to work with Nolan, he has made his peace with passing on Harvey Dent
"Sometimes you look at a role, it's good, it's a good role in a great movie— I subsequently did a small role in one of Christopher Nolan's movies in 'Interstellar.' I wanted to be part of that troupe, he works with the same actors over and over again, but I wanted to be on that ride."
That's not all — another film Matt Damon had to pass due to scheduling conflicts was Gus Van Sant's 2008 award-winning drama "Milk" (the role went to Josh Brolin, who earned an Oscar nomination for the same). The actor was wrapping up filming on Paul Greengrass' "Green Zone" at the time and couldn't take on the part. The Hollywood A-lister is a busy man — he has starred in his fair share of popular movies, but it's interesting to think about how many other successful films he could have participated in.