Matt Damon has described his acting work as the perfect training to make his directorial debut.
Since the actor made his breakthrough with Good Will Hunting back in 1997 he has worked with some of the industry's biggest directors including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Damon is set to move behind his camera next year and he believes that working with some of these great filmmakers has been an education.
Speaking to US TV show The Business the actor said: "The first time I met with Anthony Minghella he started asking me all these questions about the directors [I'd worked with].
"He started to ask about Spielberg and Coppola and started to ask about Gus Van Sant and I was like giving him the one-eye I think because he just won like 100 Oscars for The English Patient. He was the toast of the town and here he was asking about how these other guys worked.
"He smiled and he said, 'You don't know this yet but we all live on an island and we don't get to visit each other's islands. I think actors make such good directors because you get to see inside all these different processes and take what works for you and put it in your own process.'
"And so that made a lot of sense to me and so I've been thinking about these last 12 or 13 years as a chance to apprentice myself to these incredible people and I've learned a bunch from each of them."
But before Damon moves behind the camera we will be seeing him in front of it with his new movie We Bought A Zoo.
He has already completed work on Elysium and Liberace.
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