‘What connects us is so much greater than what divides us’: Matt Damon on challenging his own perceptions in new role
Matt Damon’s new film, Stillwater, sees him playing the father of an American student who is in prison in Europe for murdering her flatmate.
It sounds familiar because it is loosely based on the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in 2007 and the subsequent imprisonment of Amanda Knox.
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were placed under suspicion. Both were initially convicted, but after a series of different decisions Italy’s highest court threw out the convictions in 2015.
Ms Knox is never named on screen but Damon says the case was an initial “jumping off point” for Stillwater, which focuses on his character – an oil-worker or ‘roughneck’ from Oklahoma who has struggled with addiction and spent part of his life in prison.
Matt Damon stars as Bill Baker in Stillwater. Pic: Focus Features
Damon, 50, told Sky News: “The Amanda Knox case – Tom [McCarthy – director and co-writer] and I never talked about that because it served as kind of a jumping off point for this story, It’s really about what happens to this father and his daughter after all the cameras go away and how they move on with their lives.
“They’re both kind of broken and they both need each other very much – he’s carrying all this anger and pain and grief and regret and shame for having been an absentee father, for having been an addict, for all the ways in which he failed her and he’s trying to redeem himself and he’s trying to help her in any way he can, and yet he has none of the skills or tools that one would need to do that – yet he’s still trying.
The film is inspired by the murder of Meredith Kercher. Pic: Focus Features
“I just thought there was something beautiful and heartbreaking about it – you can feel that it’s probably not going to go well, and it’s a story about what feels to me like real people.”
The film invites us to challenge our preconceptions about others, and the Bourne star admits that’s exactly what happened while he was researching the role.
He says he spent time with real roughnecks in Oklahoma and found plenty of common ground.
“I come from a very different culture within America. I’m from the northeast and Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a very different place from Stillwater, Oklahoma, or some of the smaller places outside Stillwater where these guys live,” Damon explained.
“And so I had my own ideas about what I was going to see when I went down there, and as always, as happens literally every time in a world in which we’re constantly being told by, particularly by politicians, how divided we are and who are stoking those flames in order to kind of self-promote – you get past all that and it’s what connects us that is so much greater than what divides us.”
While Damon didn’t dwell on the real case that inspired the film, his co-star Abigail Breslin, who plays his daughter Alison, says she did research it, and even went as far as contacting Ms Knox.
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“I didn’t want to do anything that was mimicking or copying that trial because Alison is a very different person, and I was not trying to portray Amanda in it, but it was an amazing source of reference material,” she said.
“I had a brief Twitter conversation with her, but I don’t feel out of respect to her that it would be appropriate to share what we discussed.”
The film has divided critics, though many have praised Damon’s performance.
But the actor hopes that the movie will ultimately unite audiences.
He says that if we take the time to get to know those we are politically opposed to, we may come to understand them – as he did with the roughnecks he spent time with while preparing for his role.
Damon spent time with real roughnecks in Oklahoma to prepare for the role. Pic: Focus Features
Damon said: “We’re very different, politically we’re very different.
“Kenny Baker was this guy that was our consultant on the movie and we named Bill Baker [Damon’s character] after Kenny as a nod to him because we were so grateful for all his help.
“And he’s got unbelievable values and he’s such a good family man and such a good person, and, you know, you understand suddenly his political decisions in the context of that.
“I hope [the film] just blows up some of those kind of caricatures that we have about each other in ourselves.”
Stillwater is out in cinemas on 6 August.
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Davina McCall has said her short-term memory is “a bit remiss” as she recovers from brain tumour surgery.
Speaking from her bed, the visibly emotional TV presenter posted a short video updating her Instagram followers on her condition, saying it had been a “mad” time.
She expressed an “enormous heartfelt thank you” to people who had messaged her after she revealed this month she had a benign brain tumour, a colloid cyst, which she described as “very rare”.
Looking bright, but with a visibly bruised left eye, McCall said: “My short-term memory is a bit remiss.
“But that is something I can work on, so I’m really happy about that. I’m writing everything down, to keep myself feeling safe.”
She added: “It’s been mad, and it’s just really nice to be back home, I’m on the other side.”
In a message posted with the video, she reiterated her thanks for all the support she has received, adding: “Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed. Have a couple of sleeps during the day which keeps my brain clear… Slowly, slowly…”
When she first shared her diagnosis, she said chances of having it were “three in a million” and that she had discovered it several months previously after a company offered her a health scan in return for giving a menopause talk.
The 57-year-old star said support from her fans had “meant the world”.
She said she was being “brilliantly looked after” by her partner, hairdresser Michael Douglas, and her stepmother, Gabby, who she calls mum.
Becoming tearful, the presenter said: “I’d quickly like to say big up the stepmums. I don’t really say thank you to Gabby enough. She’s been an amazing rock my whole life.”
McCall was estranged from her birth mother, Florence McCall, who died in 2008.
McCall with 2002 Big Brother winner Kate Lawler. Pic: Rex Features
With a catch in her voice, McCall went on: “I’ve got a massive dose of vitamin G – I’m just really grateful. I’ve always been really lucky in my life, but I feel unbelievably grateful right now. So, thanks for everything, all of you.
“I’m on the mend, I’m resting and sleeping loads and I feel really good. I’m just very lucky.”
Stars including presenter Alison Hammond, singer Craig David and radio host Zoe Ball quickly shared their delight at the positive update.
McCall rose to fame presenting on MTV in the mid-1990s, and later on Channel 4’s Streetmate, before becoming a household name as the host of Big Brother from 2000 to 2010.
McCall with her MBE, alongside her partner Michael Douglas and her daughter Holly Robertson. Pic: PA
She’s gone on to present programmes across the networks, the most recent being ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad.
Last year, McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Married twice, McCall has three children, two daughters and a son, with her second husband, presenter Matthew Robertson.
She has lived with Douglas since 2022, and they present a weekly lifestyle podcast together, Making The Cut.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, the bestselling novelist who wrote A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91.
The Leeds-born author, who sold more than 90 million books, died peacefully at her home on Sunday after a short illness and was “surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.
Taylor Bradford, who was often labelled “the grand dame of blockbusters”, hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.
The story sold millions of copies and traced the journey of Emma Harte from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire.
The rags to riches story was followed by many other successful books with the author’s works being published in more than 40 languages across 90 countries.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
The author on her 21st birthday. Pic: Bradford Enterprises/PA
Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of publisher HarperCollins, said the author was a “natural storyteller”, adding: “Barbara Taylor Bradford was a truly exceptional writer whose first book, the international bestseller A Woman Of Substance, changed the lives of so many who read it – and still does to this day.”
Taylor Bradford, who was made an OBE in 2007 for services to literature, wrote a total of 40 novels during her career – her most recent was The Wonder Of It All, published last year.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
Taylor Bradford with her husband Robert in 1993. Pic: PA
Born in May 1933 as the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor, she worked as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter and then the paper’s first woman’s editor.
At the age of 20, she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman’s Own and the London Evening News.
She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they married in London on Christmas Eve in 1963 before moving to New York the following year.
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The couple were married for 55 years until he died from a stroke in 2019.
Following a private funeral in New York, the author will be buried alongside her late husband at the city’s Westchester Hills Cemetery.
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