NEW YORK, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Matt Damon says watching how legendary U.S. actor Robert De Niro can vanish in a crowd helped inspire his portrayal of a CIA agent in "The Good Shepherd."
De Niro directed and acts in the film about the early days of the U.S. government's Central Intelligence Agency.
"Bob was just insistent on absolute naturalism and realism," Damon said in New York. "He's a student of human behavior. I've never seen an actor as famous as him walk into a room and do what he does, which is he just disappears. He absolutely disappears and he sits there and he watches everything. He studies absolutely every interaction, and the reason his work remains so good and he remains so relevant as an artist is because he sits there and he is constantly just downloading human behavior."
Damon said watching De Niro do this helped him better understand this secretive, analytical character he plays.
"The guy should be subtle," Damon said. "He's the head of counter-intelligence. Like, what's he going to do, tell you how he's feeling? ... He should be reserved and he should be emotionally distant because it's very dangerous for him to be any other way."
