Jennifer Aniston recently confessed she existed on veggies, lean protein and kale to get in shape to play a stripper in "We're the Millers." And now Matt Damon is revealing that he tackled a tough workout schedule to get buff for his new movie, "Elysium."
"Elysium" director Neill Blomkamp did some makeshift Photoshopping to show Damon, 42, the shape he wanted. Blomkamp "actually had a picture with my face tacked onto this guy with this body, and they literally hired me a trainer and I went to him with the picture," Damon told Variety. "It was four hours a day in the gym -- and I’m not 26 anymore, but I got in shape."
In the sci-fi movie, which opens Aug. 9, Damon plays a factory worker who must break into the protected rich-people space habitat of Elysium, or die trying.
Damon wasn't Blomkamp's first choice to play the role -- rapper Eminem was.
"That's true -- people have been asking that," Damon acknowledged to the magazine. "Probably half of the movies I do have somebody else's fingerprints on them. It's the nature of the business. I've passed on things other actors have taken. You never know exactly what the alchemy is going to be. Sometimes you end up with somebody and you can't believe that wasn't your first choice the whole time. I've always felt the right actor gets the part."