Matt Damon in Contagion

Matt Damon seems to have done it all – and convincingly. He’s excelled as an emaciated heroin addict in Courage Under Fire, a renegade secret agent in the Bourne movies, and a tough-talking nincompoop in True Grit.
He’s starring in Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller Contagion about a new viral pandemic, playing a man whose wife is stricken with the disease.
Kurt Andersen talked with Damon just after he had finished shooting the movie in Chicago. He explained how an ER doctor on set helped shape one of the film’s most dramatic scenes.
(Originally aired: January 7, 2011)