The "Grimm" Tale of Matt and Heath

Both Matt Damon and Heath Ledger have played brave characters. Matt is super spy Jason Bourne and Heath was macho in A Knight's Tale and The Patriot so why did the guys opt to play two rather cowardly brothers who put on elaborate ruses to scam villagers out of hard-earned cash? Both guys told us they wanted to work with legendary director and Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam and hey, it would be fun! Let's be The Brothers Grimm!

The two cute actors met with us in Beverly Hills recently to dish on working together, bonding as bros, Matt's struggle with his accent, their many upcoming projects, childhood fairy tale experiences, scary moments and funny stuff on the set. And, oh yeah, who is better at bowling and a little on Heath and pregnant girlfriend/fiancé? Michelle Williams.

Matching their Grimm characters, Matt is the more outgoing talker. Heath is more laid back...at least in conversation; not in wardrobe. Mr. Ledger popped his head in the door and we noticed his buzz-cut lack of hair and couldn't miss the black and white wide-stripe Tee that just screamed "prison escapee"! We asked him about it and he swore he hasn't been put in jail lately. The shirt was just to compliment his baggy pants and bright red tennis shoes! He claims to have had his hair cut off on "a grumpy day". Buff Matt, like his pal and fellow Bostonian Mark Wahlberg, likes to do interviews in his Boston Red Sox baseball cap. His "LiveStrong" black tee was a statement to his friendly style. Quite the dynamic duo. Let's chat.

TeenHollywood: Both of you fellows have been working a ton. How do you balance your professional and personal lives?

Matt: I think it's challenging when you love the work so much and you're in the state that we've been in where really good projects are being offered to you, so you end up doing four movies in 18 months. For me, it's like yeah, I have to consciously step on the brakes in order to just claim a little time for my own life.

Heath: Yeah, I quite literally tell my agent not to call me. Don't send me anything. I don't want to know about it.

TeenHollywood: Are you taking time off soon? [We're thinking of the engagement rumors and his girlfriend Michelle's pregnancy].

Heath: Yeah, I might do something mid-next year maybe. I'll have had a year off by then, but eventually, in the not too distant future, I want to have some personal time.

TeenHollywood: [Dare we ask?] To become a dad?

Heath: [He smiles] That's exactly why I want to create the time.

TeenHollywood: [Moving on] The Grimm fairy tales are pretty, well.. grim! They are kind of dark. Did you both know of them as kids?

Matt: I had a copy of the Grimm's Fairy Tales and so did Heath, and we read them. I kind of always remembered the bullet points. I didn't quite remember some of the darker details. Also, depending on your different translations, there's a point in "Rapunzel" where Terry [Gilliam] was laughing about how after the guy keeps climbing up her hair, she starts to develop a bump on her stomach. It's because the guy's climbing up her hair and they're having sex in the room and she gets pregnant. They're kind of adult stories.

TeenHollywood: These roles don't seem typical for either of you. They are kind of switched. Were you both offered the role of the other brother at first?

Matt: Yeah. But we felt like we'd played those characters before. But listen we both took it to work with Terry. I would've played any role in this movie just to work with him, but we did ask, 'Hey, is there any way that you could change it?' He said that he'd done that for Twelve Monkeys. He said that Brad [Pitt] and Bruce [Willis] were kind of known for the other thing and he switched them and thought that it was a lot more fun to work that way. So he said yeah.

TeenHollywood: Heath, do you still live in L.A.?

Heath: I just moved to Brooklyn. I had been based in LA for nine years. I probably spent three of the nine years here (in LA). I've never worked here. Lords of Dogtown was the first time I worked here in nine years.

TeenHollywood: So Matt, how was doing that English accent? [We've heard that he's been ribbed for the accent in the film].

Matt: [pointing at Heath] For him, it's a lot easier than me. For some reason, I can do accents in this country, but I have a real problem hearing it and I don't know what it is. I think that it's just sounds that we don't have in America.

Heath: We really had a good dialect coach. It was just a day. I remember, in just five minutes, it clicked for you. It's a matter of hearing it.

Matt: Yeah but it would go in and out for me. It was hard for me. A lot of people, especially English and Australians, guys who come here are really good with accents. I mean, look at the known Australian actors, there are probably 10 of them, they're all terrific with accents probably because they have to be in order to come and work in America. For us, as long as we can sound like we're from Nebraska, we have the luxury of not having to do much. [Heath just grins].

TeenHollywood: We've heard that Terry is a pretty crazy director, really an eccentric genius but kind of volatile. Agree?

Matt: He doesn't yell at you. He's got the greatest energy, and it's totally infectious. You have 200 people, we had a huge crew because it was such a big movie and all of these people were literally feeding off of this guy's energy. I mean, he's involved in every decision, the production design, the wardrobe.

Heath: Yes and with the props, he's on his hands and knees.

Matt: Every frame he's adjusting and tinkering. He just kind of has this boundless energy, and so if he yells he's yelling at the world and not yelling at anyone. He would never yell at a crew member or anything like that ever. In fact he's like a really warm, loving leader.

TeenHollywood: Is he so involved because this film was so big in terms of sets etc.?

Matt: Well, we could have a great take, but if the geese aren't right in the background or the smoke coming up in the chimney, it's like, 'The f**king smoke in the f**king chimney isn't right.' And you're like, 'Yeah. Heath and I were really good in that, weren't we?' And then you do one and you go, 'Oh, that was bad.' 'Yeah. That was bad.' And Terry's like, 'I loved it!'

TeenHollywood: What is it like being in Terry Gilliam's wacky world?

Matt: It's like Jonathan [Pryce] when he started to work on Brazil, on his first day of work and he said, 'I did the first take and I was fantastic.' He said, 'I was nuanced. I was brilliant.' Then Terry came up to him and put his arm on his shoulder and he said, 'Jonathan, turn around.' Jonathan turned around and looked at the set and he said, 'You are competing with this set and you are losing.' (Jonathan said), 'Oh, I get it. I gotta be a little bigger." He was getting chewed up.

Heath: You have to be bigger. Otherwise, you just get eaten alive. They were just brilliant, those guys. Jonathan Pryce, wow!

Matt: You just disappear. Definitely, I mean, every single thing is over the top. The houses are at an angle, everything, the clothes that we're wearing.

TeenHollywood: Did you two develop a brotherly bond before, during or after this project?

Heath: Yeah. To a certain degree we had to for the film. But I think it just happened anyway. Befriending each other wasn't hard. We had four weeks before shooting the film where we were doing accents and horse riding. It was just shaping our characters.

Matt: And we're both total geeks about movies too.

Heath: We really put our hearts and souls into the creative process.

Matt: That bleeds over into the friendship. And then we're in Prague where no one has their families and we're all just there making this movie. So we'd all go out to dinner and hang out. We'd actually would go bowl every Friday night, Friday and Saturday night with pretty much most of the crew. We'd take over this one bowling alley in Prague.

TeenHollywood: Who is the better bowler?

Heath: [Heath points at Matt] This guy is really good!

Matt: Well, it depended on how much beer we'd had.

TeenHollywood: So you feel you kind of balance each other out as actors?

Matt: Yeah, if one guy's falling, the other one picks him up and also, Heath can get really excited and that would get me really excited just about a scene or about solving a certain problem in a scene. It's fun to work with people who love hard work. You all love what you're doing.

TeenHollywood: What do you guys have in common in real life?

Matt: We have a lot in common I hope. I hope I have a lot in common with Heath. We have a real similar approach to work and outlook on our careers and how to approach them. We had a lot of laughs while we worked. I think we had a pretty similar sense of humor.

TeenHollywood: Matt you get to cozy up a little with hot actress Monica Bellucci. How was that?

Matt: [kidding us] It was terrible. She's talentless. She's cruel and she's really hard to look at. No, she was really great. I was so close to kissing her in one scene. She was about to kiss me and then she had to turn and see Heath breaking the mirror and scream and I'd say, 'You are the fairest of them all.' And I go in to kiss her and each take I'd get really close and she'd (scream). So, you know, I was like 'Don't break the mirror, Heath. Don't break the mirror, Heath.' You could see him grinning behind me.

TeenHollywood: So did you guys come up with the brothers' personalities?

Heath: Basically, the idea that we didn't play them as these heroic brave figures. We played them as cowardly. We screamed like little schoolgirls.

Matt: Chuck Roven [the producer] actually pulled us aside and he said, 'You guys were screaming like girls.' We were like, 'Yeah. We know. We think it's funny.'

TeenHollywood: Well, I would think you could take creative license on these brothers. How much is really known about them?

Matt: Oh, a lot is known about them. The real Brothers Grimm were these wonderful scholars. They were huge figures in German history. At a time when Germans were really embarrassed by their culture and by their folktales, these guys unearthed all of these stories and collected them and wrote them down. Suddenly everyone got very proud of their heritage. Jacob [Heath's character] was actually a really influential politician and they collaborated until they died....and then there's our movie. [laughs] They're spinning in their graves.

Heath: Hey, it's a fairy tale.

TeenHollywood: Jacob, as you play him, Heath, is kind of a cookoo visionary.

Heath: That was something I allowed myself to do once we started shooting. A lot of it came from Terry's energy. So I started to mimic him a little bit. But it's certainly not him. Terry gives you the opportunity to step outside of yourself. He dares you to be bad.

TeenHollywood: Can one of you tell us something else funny that happened on set?

Heath: I get a little motion sickness. We had to be strung up in these harnesses. I didn't fair too well getting spun around. And for some reason, I decided to have a late lunch.

TeenHollywood: Did you lose it?

Heath: Yeah. But not on Matt.

TeenHollywood: Well, that's a good thing. Heath, what drives you to work so hard and stay out of mainstream Hollywood?

Heath: I did four or five films over the last 18 months including this. I guess, after Grimm, I was heading down a path where it was starting to get difficult to find good material and good people to work with. So I thought, 'Screw this' and I just wanted to show what I could do, in many different colors of myself. So I really picked four different stories and four really diverse characters to portray.

TeenHollywood: And you are talking about....?

Heath: From this to Lords of Dogtown and Brokeback Mountain and Cassanova and Candy in Australia, which is the love story between two junkies.

TeenHollywood: Is it a relief to go back to Australia?

Heath: I tell you, it was such a relief to act in my own accent. It was the first time in eight years. It was just amazing. I forgot how easy it is. Just being able to breathe and let your voice breathe and mumble or just say whatever you want. It was just this freedom.

TeenHollywood: What do you have in common with Cassanova?

Heath: [laughs] Very little, particularly in this movie. This isn't the Fellini version of Cassanova. This is the Walt Disney version. It's really entertaining but it's just a lighthearted romp.

TeenHollywood: Matt, you seem to be doing sequels. Maybe Jason Bourne should end up in an Ocean's 12 movie?

Matt: Yeah, just kill everybody. No, I think they obviously want to make another Bourne movie. That would be down the line. The movie Syriana's coming out this year. I just finished the Martin Scorsese movie [The Departed with Leo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson] and I'm starting this De Niro movie[The Good Shepherd]next week.

TeenHollywood: Both you guys are a little busy. Are you writing again Matt?

Matt: When I stop getting these great jobs. As it is now, I don't have enough hours in the day to get done all the work I have in front of me, so once all that cools down.

TeenHollywood: Will you do a super project, write, direct and star?

Matt: I'd love that, yeah. We were talking about that, something small. Heath and I both want to direct eventually.

TeenHollywood: Will you collaborate with Ben again?

Matt: Yeah, I hope so. He's actually getting ready to direct a film next year, a Dennis Lehane novel that he adapted with a friend of ours that we grew up with called Gone, Baby, Gone.

TeenHollywood: What do you think of the friends working together in each other's movies trend?

Matt: I think it makes a lot of sense for people if they're having success working together. But also it's just fun. You spend 14 to 16 hours a day on a movie set, it's great to like the people that you're working with. That's why directors often team up again with actors or actors try to work together.

Heath: You form a shorthand.

Matt: Yeah, it makes it much easier to work. And also, for instance writing, like with Ben, there were no formalities. We grew up together so it was just we could kind of cut to the chase. It was pure creation. There was never any politicking or diplomacy. It was like 'that sucks, that's good, shut up, f**k you' and we just cut right to it. That's what Heath means by shorthand.

TeenHollywood: It's just trust.

Matt: Yeah. You end up with a trust of people were somebody says 'no, no, don't do that and if you trust them, you don't get insulted, you just go 'oh, okay, they're looking out for me'. You really collaborate and get to the solution a lot quicker.

TeenHollywood: Heath, what was it like working with director Ang Lee on Brokeback Mountain?

Heath: Brokeback Mountain was a very lonely experience and it was supposed to be. My character was extremely lonely and I think I carried that through the whole experience. [Ang and Terry] are both wonderful directors and they definitely both have the same level of attention to detail. Sometimes Ang will be like, 'Okay, drag cigarette. Okay, blow out. Okay, look at mountain. Okay, now look at feet. Look back at mountain. Okay.' You try to take this in, make it look natural. Terry does that too in a way. He'll yell out things to you but it's kind of in different tones. Terry laughs a lot more.

TeenHollywood: Some of the Grimm tales and images in this film are pretty scary. Do you remember scariest movie moment growing up?

Matt: Friday the 13th, I remember being terrified. My father took me to Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I was like eight and that was some real poor parenting, I can tell you that. We still talk about that one. For a year, I thought there were pods in my closet. I couldn't go to bed. That was probably as scared as I ever was.

TeenHollywood: Well, after "Bourne", you are a big action hero...scared no more.

Matt: Well, I'm more kind of low key in public. 'Please, just an actor, just an actor.'

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.