Matt Damon says kissing co-star Scarlett Johansson was ‘hell’

Matt Damon has recalled the time he had to kiss Scarlett Johansson for a scene that turned out to be a less-pleasant experience than he was expecting.

The 52-year-old actor starred in the 2011 comedy film We Bought A Zoo with Johansson, about a man who buys a dilapitated zoo following the death of his wife.

Damon made the confession during a game for LadBible, where he and his Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt had to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a statement.

The topic of kissing co-stars came up when the actors were posed with the statement, “You should tell someone if they have bad breath.”

Both actors agreed with the statement and revealed that rather than tell a person they had bad breath, they would instead ask them if they wanted some gum.

Damon then went on to tell the story about kissing Johansson while shooting We Bought a Zoo, joking that it was “hell” having to kiss her.

“Can you image how horrible that was for me?” he said.

“We went to lunch and she and I both thought it was over. She ate an onion sandwich for lunch and she came in and Cameron Crowe had set the camera up and it was a tight shot of the kiss, and she goes, ‘Oh shit, I literally just had an onion sandwich!’”

Damon said he kept making fun of Johansson for having onion breath for the rest of the scene.

The Good Will Hunting actor’s latest role is as Lt Leslie Groves Jr, director of the Manhattan Project, in Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer. The movie stars Cillian Murphy as the “father of the atomic bomb”.

In a recent interview with the film’s cast, Damon revealed a promise he made to his wife during couple’s therapy.

“This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” he told his colleagues in a conversation for Entertainment Weekly.

“I had – not to get too personal – negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. I had been in Interstellar, and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation,” Damon joked of the director who famously enjoys working with actors on a recurring basis.

“But I actually negotiated in couples therapy ­– this is a true story – the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called,” he said.

“This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.”