Seeming slightly daunted as he enters a conference room at the plush Park Hyatt hotel, Damon, 37, looking fit from his training for the film admits to some jetlag but is affable and jovial, seeming far more interested in discussing the process of making the Bourne films rather than the celebrity that surrounds him.
When asked how he got into the mindset of playing the character, his response speaks of a practical approach.
"Oddly enough, I think Doug Liman [director of The Bourne Identity] said to me the first time around, 'I think the character should walk like a boxer'. I said, 'What does that mean?' He said, 'They move in a certain way and it's economic and it's cool and it's to the point and I think that's how you should walk.' So I took private lessons for six months."
This time around, Jason Bourne is closer than ever to piecing together his history and how he became the finely tuned killer he is. Damon himself has been touted as a more realistic action star in comparison to old school icons such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis so FILMINK asks how he feels about the tag.
"I think it's kind of ridiculous in my case so I don't really worry about it sticking," he says. "I'm an action star this week but I don't think anybody will think of me that way next week." When asked what he and his character have in common he jests "The languages, the fighting. I'm an excellent lover!"
It's clear that Damon appreciates the documentary style of Paul Greengrass (United 93) who directed The Bourne Supremacy and this third installment.
"His camera reacts to the action, it never anticipates it and as an actor working within that it's the most liberating feeling because you're only asked to do things the way you feel they should happen," he says. Asked whether he feared anything in the script, Damon replies laughingly, "I never had a script. That's what I feared!"
Adding to the on-screen tension says Damon was the logistics of shooting the main set pieces - which continue the globe-trotting tradition of the franchise - amongst real crowds in Tangier, Waterloo Station in London and a thrilling car chase in New York City.
"All the big set pieces, they were really tough, ambitious, logistical undertakings," he says. "Part of the energy of all those scenes you can see on the actors' faces because we're all tense and there's a lot of pressure and it's expensive and we're trying to get it right. There are sequences in Waterloo where if you saw the raw footage - I'm walking through and somebody walks up and takes a picture - and I'm like 'Not now!' he laughs.
"It felt like an enormous game of chicken. The stakes were higher this time, the budget was greater and because we were going to Waterloo and because we were going to New York City to shoot a car chase we knew that by taking those things on we were increasing the budget and if we came up short then we were failing on a grander scale."
Damon, despite the hefty pay packets he earns for the Bourne films - is an actor who seems to eschew the trappings of Hollywood excess, including the seemingly obligatory entourage. When FILMINK asks what keeps him level headed he jests "I have a team of people that keep me in line. I have a great entourage, a lot of things can be solved by picking a good entourage."
More seriously, Damon says living away from Hollywood with his wife and young daughter in Florida as well as his family's attitude to his occupation keeps his feet on the ground.
"No one in my family is too impressed with my career which helps because no one lets me take myself too seriously," he says. His mother a professor specialising in non-violent conflict resolution brings another level of reflection to the question of violence in the films.
"If 14 year old boys are going to see this movie, they need to see that if there's violence, there's consequences that the character suffers as a result of the decisions that they make which is a good thing to put out in a movie."
First published on Bigpond Movies and filmink.com.au, August 2007.
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