Matt Damon explains why he TURNED DOWN Avatar and a $200m payday

Matt Damon has explained why he turned down the lead role in Avatar, which subsequently cost him a payday of over $200 million.

For the 2009 epic, Avatar, several actors were considered for the role of Jake Sully, including Damon, Chris Pratt, Chris Pine, Chris Evans, Channing Tatum, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Ultimately, Sam Worthington earned the role but only after Damon had to turn it down.

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The Academy Award winner was offered 10% of the movie's box office earnings, and as it would go on to be the most successful film of all time, he lost out on life-changing money.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Damon described just how stupid a decision that turned out to be.

"It’s the dumbest thing an actor ever did in the history of acting," he admitted.

"I've probably done, like, 50 movies. I've never been in a movie that made $1 billion."

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Damon was in the middle of filming the Bourne franchise at the time, and due to his commitments on that trilogy of movies, he didn't want to leave his colleagues to jump ship to another project.

"I'm sure it's the most money an actor has ever turned down, you know," he told CNN.

"I had a contract. I was in the middle of shooting the Bourne movie and I knew that we were going to need work at the end and I had to get it all the way to the finish line and I would have to leave the movie kind of early and leave them in the lurch a little big and I didn't want to do that. I desperately wanted to work with Cameron. I mean, because he works so rarely."

Cameron tells Damon to 'get over' Avatar

Avatar director James Cameron has now told Damon, tongue-in-cheek, to get over the loss in earnings, but did offer him the chance to appear in a future instalment of the Avatar franchise.

"He’s beating himself up over this," the director told Radio 1.

"And I really think you know, 'Matt, you’re kind of like one of the biggest movie stars in the world, get over it.' But he had to do another Bourne film which was on his runway and there was nothing we could do about that. So he had to regretfully decline.

 "We must do it," he said of a future collaboration.

"We have to do it so the world is in equilibrium again. But he doesn’t get 10%."