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Actor Matt Damon bartended in Knoxville in the late 1990s to prepare for a film role.According to Damon, he worked for free for about a month to perfect his Southern accent.The exact location of the Knoxville bar where he worked remains a mystery.
Before Matt Damon was winning Oscars, he was serving drinks in Knoxville.
The actor recalled his time in East Tennessee during in a recent interview with GQ. “I just told the manager, this woman, I just told her what I was doing … so it was an extra bartender for her at no charge right?” Damon tells his “The Odyssey” co-stars Robert Pattison and Tom Holland in the video.
“I was like, ‘I’ll give all my tips to these guys, and I just need to be here.'”
According to IMDb, Damon spent time bartending in Knoxville for free while preparing his Southern accent for his role as Rudy Baylor in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1997 film, “The Rainmaker.” He later hired one of his customers as his dialect coach.
However, the exact bar where he worked remains unknown.
Here’s everything we know about Damon’s stint in the Scruffy City.
When, where did Matt Damon bartend in Knoxville?
Damon said in the GQ interview that he spent about a month bartending in Knoxville in the late 1990s, as he had time to fill before rehearsals for the film began at Coppola’s home in Napa Valley.
“If you’re serving drinks to people, they talk to you,” he added, noting that his character in the movie also worked as a bartender.
Although the “Good Will Hunting” actor did not specify where he bartended, many social media users are trying to solve the mystery.
“It was late summer, early fall 1996. He worked on the Strip at a hole in the wall bar where University Liquors is currently,” wrote one Reddit user. “There was a bar at the end of that outdoor hallway, it was the “underage” bar of the time… $10 for 2 pitchers of Bud Light.”
Other guesses include Patrick Sullivan’s (now known as Lonesome Dove), Out of Bounds, and a bar called Ivy’s/Bonkers on the Cumberland strip.
Were you ever served a drink by Damon in Knoxville? Let us know by emailing news@knoxnews.com.
Diana Leyva covers trending news and service journalism for The Tennessean. Contact her at Dleyva@gannett.com.