Matt Damon Reveals the Pact He Made with His Wife in Couples Therapy — And It Involves Christopher Nolan!

Matt Damon had one exception to his vow to take a break from acting — if Oppenheimer writer-director Christopher Nolan called him for a role. 

The Oscar winner, 52, who has been busy with several projects in the past few years including Air, The Last Duel and Stillwater, shared in Entertainment Weekly’s Around the Table discussion that he made a promise to his wife Luciana Barroso that he would take some time off unless the Batman Begins director offered him a part in his next film.

"This is going to sound made up, but it's actually true," Damon revealed, who was joined with with Nolan and costars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. "I had — not to get too personal — negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off.” 

“I had been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn't in the rotation,” he continued, “but I actually negotiated in couples therapy ­— this is a true story — the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called. 

“This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you,” he added. “He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household."

Damon landed the role of Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, the military leader who supervised the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb.

Damon recently credited Barroso for helping get him through a low time in his career.

In an interview with Jake's Takes, Damon revealed "Without naming any particular movies, sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you're still making it."

"And I remember halfway through production and you've still got months to go and you've taken your family somewhere, you know, and you've inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about it — like, 'What have I done?' " he added.

Damon recalled his wife of 18 years saying, "'We're here now,'" which put things in perspective for him.

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"I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor. And what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort," he said. "If you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you're a pro. And she really helped me with that."

Damon and Barroso, who wed in 2005, celebrated the 20th anniversary of their first meeting earlier this year.

The duo met when Damon visited the bar Barroso, 46, used to work at in 2003 and tied the knot two years later in a private ceremony in New York City. They now share daughters Isabella, 16, Gia, 14, and Stella, 12. Barroso also has a daughter named Alexia, 24, from a previous relationship.

"We definitely had a connection right away,” Barroso recalled in an interview with Vogue Australia back in 2018, adding “it was so easy to talk to each other.”

Oppenheimer opens in theaters on Friday.