Matt Damon shoots a mean bow and arrow in The Great Wall, but don't be fooled by his apparent expertise.
"With a CGI arrow, I'm pretty damn good," says Damon, who stars in the action flick as an English mercenary who finds himself battling monsters in ancient China. "But with an actual arrow, not so much."
In other words, he's not about to challenge Jennifer Lawrence to any Hunger Games v. The Great Wall competitions. "She's got a good grasp on that whole thing," Damon said. "I think she's got me beat."
Damon's hair for the movie was a whole other kind of battle. " I'd never done that before—700 extensions [and] it took 12 hours," he recalled. "The tiny glue [extensions], which is weird. And then I lived with it for five months...The kids loved it. The kids were into it for like a week and then they kind forgot about it. I got good at doing the hair ties, just to get a ponytail up."
So where are those long locks now?
"I flew from China and went to do a day of extra filming on The Martian and so I flew to Hungary, landed, went into the production office, and cut all that hair off, and left it on the floor on Hungary," Damon said. "It was a rat's nest...It was so gross. It was so nasty."
Narcos star Pedro Pascal, who plays Damon's sidekick in the film, revealed for the first time that the sword fight training for the movie left him in tears. "The first week of training—I can't believe I'm even going to admit this—I called somebody and I cried," he said. "I was like, 'I am old. Everything hurts so much. There's gotta be something wrong. I must have something because I can't walk and I can't think. I'm in pain and all I see and feel is pain.'"
The Great Wall is in theaters on Friday, Feb. 17.
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