No career regrets for versatile Damon

Matt Damon blithely compares action films to adult movies — skimpy characters, little plot and lots of, ahem, action.

Yet here he is, the “Good Will Hunting” star who didn’t appear in last year’s “Gigli,” making the publicity rounds on behalf of a sequel to the 2002 action sleeper “The Bourne Identity.”

Mr. Damon remains a professional conventional-wisdom bucker, be it shunning the blockbuster path taken by Beantown bud Ben Affleck or taking roles whose main effect is to make him look fool-headed (2003’s “Stuck on You”).

“I don’t have an overarching strategy,” he says during a recent phone interview, as if working with the Farrelly brothers could ever be called a strategic maneuver. “I like to do things in different genres.”

Producers, at least those working on Mr. Damon’s new film, “The Bourne Supremacy,” don’t mind his unpredictable tastes.

“They liked that I wasn’t the obvious choice to play that guy,” Mr. Damon says of the original “Bourne.” Much of the team responsible for the first film returns in “Supremacy,” a consistency that makes itself known in the engaging finished product.

The notion behind the “Bourne” films, Mr. Damon says, is for the action to “grow organically out of the stories.” His inspiration came from films such as “La Femme Nikita.”

“It’s a lot harder than it sounds,” says Mr. Damon, who reportedly used his clout on the first “Bourne” feature to beef up the characters.

The new “Supremacy” revisits the semiamnesiac Jason Bourne after the events of the first film have wrapped. He’s living as quiet a life as possible with his girlfriend, Marie (Franka Potente), in Spain, when he realizes he’s being hunted all over again.

Soon, Bourne is on the run once more, this time trying to prove he isn’t responsible for a string of killings while simultaneously figuring out who still wants him dead.

Director Paul Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday”) replaces Doug Liman but keeps the original’s jittery tone.

“He wanted scenes to feel, rather than theatrical, a little rough and observed,” Mr. Damon says of Mr. Greengrass’ work.

Second-unit director Dan Bradley made sure of that during an impressive car-chase sequence that stands apart from most shot today.

“It’s all hand-held [cameras],” Mr. Damon says. “That just doesn’t get done. He had pitched a hand-held car chase 12 years ago, and he got run out of the studio.”

Nothing Mr. Damon says during the interview could dispel his good-guy persona. He’s apologetic when the cellular-phone connection keeps breaking down, and he does his best to answer every question lobbed his way.

The actor’s career, while no longer white hot, still gives off enough heat to land him in the thick of the summer-movie madness.

Mr. Affleck, meanwhile, needs a hit in the worst way.

Even when Mr. Damon’s film choices prove calamitous — with “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and “All the Pretty Horses,” 2000 proved a pretty poor year — he somehow walks away from the wreckage.

He’s addicted to silly cameos — from dropping by the set of whatever project director Kevin Smith has under way to ducking into naughty teen comedies such as “Eurotrip.” Such bits can’t sustain careers, only repay debts to old friends and prove that even A-listers can loosen up a little.

He even occasionally reaches down and tries to give the underdog a hand.

In 1998, Mr. Damon and Mr. Affleck joined forces to help create Pearl Street Productions, which led to Project Greenlight. The ambitious union was meant to provide young filmmakers with a chance to get their films made — the same opportunity Mr. Smith gave the two young actors when he used his clout to help get “Hunting” greenlighted.

Mr. Damon says Greenlight grew out of the number of young writers who approached them seeking advice on how to shop their screenplays.

“We didn’t have an answer for them,” he says.

So they made one up.

The first two Greenlight films, 2002’s “Stolen Summer” and 2003’s “The Battle of Shaker Heights,” tanked.

Now, with the Greenlight machinery gearing back up, this time for Bravo instead of HBO, the creative sights are a bit more realistic. The project will produce a horror picture this time around, a genre that stands a better chance of earning a profit.

“Our hope was that, by this point, we would have had a successful movie come out of the Greenlight experience,” he says. “We’re still convinced this system can work.”

Mr. Damon, who left Harvard University a year short of graduation , hasn’t written a film since his “Hunting” screenplay earned him an Oscar.

He says he’s itching to get back to the word processor. He just doesn’t know when it might happen.

“It’s a lot more fulfilling to take something from the germ of an idea to a finished movie,” he says. “It’s a feeling that’s a lot different from being hired labor.”