
Actor Matt Damon cleared up an internet hoax he had died with an appearance on a US chat show – and admitted playing his own prank to convince a journalist pal that George Clooney is planning a gay marriage.
The Bourne Identity star told of his surprise at reading he had supposedly been killed in a fall in mountains.
But he confessed to fuelling a false rumour started as a joke by Brad Pitt that Clooney is gay and planning to marry his boyfriend.
Damon told chat show host David Letterman: “I feel pretty good… I don’t even know where I bit the dust. The cause was unknown.
“I’m actually really glad I’m on this show because I would hate to think one of my friends actually saw that and read it.
“It was a little upsetting when I heard about this because I thought it was a pretty careless and reckless kind of thing to do.”
But he admitted his own “harmless little joke” on Clooney may have led to a man stripping off in front of the star at the Venice Film Festival this week.
He told Letterman how Brad Pitt set the ball rolling by jokingly telling an Italian journalist he will marry Angelina Jolie “when George Clooney marries his boyfriend”.
Damon said: “Now if you’re in America and you say that the journalists laugh, but if you’re overseas, something gets lost in the translation.
“So it’s eight in the morning and his Italian journalist comes in and says, ‘Matt, is it true what Brad say?’I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I go, ‘Yes, of course, it’s true.’
“And he says, ‘You mean George Clooney have a boyfriend?’
“Now I’m trying to keep a straight face and I go, ‘Yes, of course, he has a boyfriend.’”
Source: Splash News