8. Matt Damon Didn't Meet Most Of His Co-Stars Until After Shooting Was Complete - The Martian
As movie-goers, we tend to assume that the actors in a given film spend every day on the set together - even if they're not sharing a scene. Though we know that to be illogical, it's hard to get it out of your head that somebody can star in a movie with somebody else and never meet them until filming has finished. Which is what happened on The Martian. It makes sense that Matt Damon, who plays the titular astronaut stranded on Mars in the wake of a mission gone wrong, wouldn't have needed to meet most of his cast mates (the film takes place across two planets, after all), but you'd still assume that - given that Damon is the lead and a major star - some sort of meeting would have taken place beforehand. When asked about the situation at the Toronto Film Festival, Damon said:
I literally just met most of the cast right now. 55 actors were wrapped by the time I started working on the movie. It was a different kind of movie for me."
Yep: Damon only met a handful of his fellow cast members whilst making The Martian, and wasn't fully introduced to the majority of them until all the marketing and promotion began. The magic of Hollywood, huh? Cast members don't even need to associate!
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
