Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum Jasin Boland/Courtesy of Universal Studios

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"The first movie I was 29 and this one I was 36, and I definitely felt my age," he says. "Particularly because, in the big fight scene in Tangiers, Joey, the guy that I'm fighting, was like 23 years old. When the first movie came out he was in high school! And he's in really good shape and he's already a much better athlete than me, so I was like, 'Oh, man, Joe, you're killing me. You've got to slow down.'"

With age taking a toll and plot lines wearing thin, Damon seemingly has no problem saying good-bye to Bourne after Ultimatum. But he's quick to acknowledge the very significant role it's played in his career. "There hasn't been a role that's had a bigger impact on my life," he says. "Maybe Good Will Hunting, because it pulled Ben [Affleck] and I out of total obscurity, but in terms of having an impact on my career — just as an example, between Supremacy and Ultimatum, there were three movies that I really wanted to do, I loved the scripts. All of these movies were, on the face of them, going to be absolute box-office misses." Those films, it turns out, just happened to be the critically-acclaimed and awards-show-lauded Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and The Departed.

"I didn't hesitate [to do them] because I knew I had the Bourne Ultimatum off in the middle distance and that there was going to be an audience that was built in for that," Damon explains. "So it allowed me the creative freedom to do all these other movies."

After hooking up with George Clooney and Brad Pitt for three Ocean's films and then globe-trotting through three Bourne films, is Damon going to make it a point to avoid franchises for the remainder of his career?

"I'm trying to only do franchises," he jokes. "In fact, the guys who wrote the movie Ocean's 13 also wrote Rounders and I said to them — because Rounders was a bomb when it first came out but now it's done really well on video — I said, 'You guys are writing the wrong sequels, we should be doing Rounders 2!'