Matt Damon hasn’t shown his kids “Good Will Hunting” yet, and he has a pretty good reason.
The acclaimed actor stopped by the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday night to chat about his new film “Downsizing,” and ended up taking a trip down memory lane with the late-night host. Colbert asked Damon if his children have seen “Good Will Hunting,” which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, but the Boston star revealed that they haven’t since the film has so much cursing in it.
Damon went on to explain that, although the film didn’t contain a lot of sex or violence, the movie was classified with an R rating because it contained too many f-bombs, over a hundred more than what was allowed for a PG-13 film.
“At the time, you were allowed to say the f-word three times,” Damon told Colbert. “I said, ‘OK, how many are we off by?’ They said, ‘You go over by 145.'”
The Oscar-winning star put the blame for the high number of f-bombs on his Boston upbringing.
“Being from Boston, I don’t think we realized how much we swore,” Damon said. “It was literally a placeholder. You’d go, ‘F–k, oh, I know what I wanted to tell you.’ When Ben [Affleck] and I wrote it, we would do the lines together and transcribe it.”
Damon’s kids have seen “Happy Feet Two,” though, which features the actor as the voice of “Bill the Krill,” opposite Brad Pitt’s “Will the Krill.” Colbert told Damon that he was first actually offered the animated role first, along with a certain fellow “Daily Show” alum.
“Jon Stewart and I were offered those roles,” Colbert said. “I’m just say, you and Brad pick up the scripts we throw out the window.”
“I really wanted to work with [director] George Miller and he said he couldn’t think of anyone else for the part,” Damon replied. “That’s hurtful. I feel like George Miller lied to me now. He should of told me.”
