Or, The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused Loving Musical Gifted Intelligent Beautiful Tender Sensitive Haunted Passionate Talented Mr. Matt Damon

By Kathleen Murphy
Special to MSN Movies

In "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), a mushroom-colored nobody climbs up out of his dingy basement apartment and restroom attendant job by putting on someone else's face, pretending to be a Harvard grad, an old pal of rich expatriate Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law). Sent off to Italy to bring the wayward boy home, Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) watches his polar opposite rise from the sun-splashed Mediterranean, as golden and beautiful as a young god. Later, lounging on the beach, Greenleaf marvels, "You're so white!" Gazing hungrily at his dreamboat, Ripley cracks wise: "It's just primer!"

Few movie moments say more about styles of acting, the lure and power of performance. Law's Greenleaf comes by his stardom, existentially speaking, as easily as breathing; this mercurial creature was born to claim center stage, charming audiences by simply turning the warm light of his attention, his facile talent, their way. In contrast, it's the cold eye of intellect that gets Damon's Ripley into the limelight. In his hunger to become Somebody, he studies the moves, learns his lines, waits for cues -- painting a self by numbers.

Check out that resplendent self -- "Matt Damon Rocks!" -- on the 1997 cover of Vanity Fair, just after his breakout role in "Good Will Hunting." Happily wallowing in billows of soap bubbles, wearing a coronet of spiky-wet hair, the golden boy leans back in his bathtub, flashing a wall-to-wall "I'm a star!" grin while clenching a white toothbrush between his teeth. Pure, unadulterated Tab Hunter for the '90s, Ivory soap clean, a bright, shiny penny.

Damon, left, and Gwyneth Paltrow in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (Paramount Pictures)

You remember that fantasy image when, a few years later, in "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Damon perches on the edge of the tub in a dim, luxurious bathroom, playing chess with the ever-seductive Law, who lounges naked in warm, soapy water. "I'm cold," the supplicant whispers, "can I get in, too?" Like any aspiring actor or adoring audience member, Damon's Ripley yearns to submerge himself in the warmth of that liquid medium where identity can magically take and lose form, where boundaries disappear and nobodies can become one with whoever they dream of being. It's the hour of the vampire, time to drink in a new personality.

Is it just coincidence that in his successful action franchise ("The Bourne Identity," 2002; "The Bourne Supremacy," 2004), Damon is resurrected from ocean and river, respectively, to track down whether he's killer or good guy as he romps through an amnesiac spook's fantastic adventures? Any graduate of Filmmaking 101 will tell you that mirrors and water in the movies are heavy-duty symbols in any "Who am I?" quest. Identity can drown or surface in such lenses.

In "The Bourne Identity," a couple of coppers roust the sleeping Damon off a park bench. The man without a name is submissive, almost apologetic for his lack of identification papers. Physically, he telegraphs a shapelessness, as though he might melt away before your eyes. Then, a cop aims his nightstick at the derelict -- and Damon's hand flies out, snake-swift, to capture it. Instantaneously, he takes solid form, as though the camera lens had just got him in focus. All the movement that follows is precise, deadly, mechanical. The metamorphosis takes your breath away. It's the moment that Damon certifies that the all-American boy has become an all-American action hero, that Clark Kent can now play Superman.

It's telling that so many of Damon's movies contain the names of his characters in their titles, formally marking every new face and identity he takes on: "Good Will Hunting," "Saving Private Ryan," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "Gerry," "The Bourne Identity."

Sure, all acting is duplicity and a search for self, a fundamentally mysterious process that allows someone to embed his/her true identity in another persona. But Damon dives in deeper than most. Sometimes, you can see the clenched-teeth stress of his effort to get under a character's skin. When the fit's perfect, Damon hums with a high-octane intensity. When it's not, he can go opaque, as though he's half out of the role, slightly detached from the movie.

Anthony Minghella, director of "Ripley," described his star as someone who believes "good acting is only possible through pain." You might write that off as directorial hyperbole, but in his best roles (Will Hunting, Pvt. James Francis Ryan, Tom Ripley, Colin Sullivan, Edward Wilson), Damon burns emotional energy as though he'd tapped into the mother lode. Still, this actor conveys the impression he's always on top of it, gauging how much he can take, how far he can go. It's not like you ever worry that the talented Mr. Damon might accidentally implode. Take this as the compliment it's meant to be: He suffers his craft carefully, always keeping a sharp eye on his limits.

Next: Damon suffers for his art