Matt Damon Has Couples Therapy To Thank For Being In ‘Oppenheimer’ Despite Vowing To Take An Acting Break

After a steady string of non-stop films, Matt Damon had promised his wife in couples therapy that he would start taking some time off. However, the actor managed to secure a caveat that he honestly didn’t expect to pan out: If acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan came calling, Damon would get a pass to work with him. Well, Nolan did reach out to Damon for Oppenheimer, and here we are.

“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon told Entertainment Weekly before explaining why he included “the Nolan exemption” in his promise to his wife:

“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, 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 just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.”

Lest anyone thinks Damon is dismissive of his wife, he recently credited her for pulling him out of funk while he was filming a movie he knew was going going to be bad halfway through production.

“She just said, ‘We’re here now,'” Damon told Jake’s Takes. “You know, and it was like… 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.”

Oppenheimer drops into theaters on July 21.