Matt Damon is currently having what would be called the biggest and most elaborate marketing run of his entire career, just after working on what he described as the hardest project yet of his career. Actually, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has just been released in the theaters, and for more than a month or so, Damon was busy promoting the movie almost everywhere on the planet. The actor has given so many interviews and been to so many premieres that now his face can be seen everywhere on the internet, along with all the other stuff related to the actor.

Naturally, something old from his early career has resurfaced - a blast from the past that is rather embarrassing and might have proven detrimental to his career at the time.

 It is not uncommon for young, unknown, or unproven actors to present a few white lies in their resumes in order to land a job, but Matt Damon's distortion of the facts backfired dramatically when his first paid acting performance went horribly wrong, to the point where his contributions were negatively impacted. He revealed the whole ordeal in a 2011 interview with the Boston Herald.

His first professional acting job was in WVCB-TV’s Use Your Smarts, where he did a vignette and played a young Michael J Fox. He was offered the part in 1985 in the show that ran from 1982 to 1988. However, Damon's eager desire to get the part led him to make false claims about his abilities, which had disastrous consequences.

“I had to ice skate. I fell and knocked myself out. So my first job ever, I actually cost the production money, because I lied in my audition and couldn’t skate,” Damon explained on Track.

Use Your Smarts was forced to pay twice as much for a young actor to play the Back to the Future favorite after it became fairly obvious that the person they had chosen for the role was unfit for the part. Instead of being paid to impersonate Michael J. Fox in an ice-skating segment, Damon was paid for knocking himself out cold.

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Even though this was his first professional acting job, it was not the first big-screen role for The Odyssey actor.

Matt Damon, the phenomenal actor and an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, had his first big-screen role where he delivered a single line of dialogue in Mystic Pizza. Two years later, he made his television debut as Brian Dennehy's son in the made-for-television film Rising Son, but that was not his first professional paycheck. His first came from his disastrous stint in Use Your Smarts, as discussed above.

Matt Damon has surely come a long way from being a young, immature kid who lied to get an acting job to a bona fide star who is carrying probably one of the biggest films of all time. His portrayal of Odysseus in the film The Odyssey has been praised by critics and audience alike, and those who have reservations can see for themselves in the theaters.

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What do you think of Matt Damon’s lie in his early career? Share your thoughts.