Matt Damon: 'I wouldn't do We Bought a Zoo without Cameron Crowe'

Matt Damon has confessed that he would not have signed on to We Bought a Zoo without the involvement of Cameron Crowe.

The Bourne Supremacy actor revealed that he would not have trusted any other director to retain the film's integrity besides Crowe, as it could easily have become too "schmaltzy".

"Without the Cameron Crowe input, I wouldn't have done it. It does feel like the kind of 'attendant pieces' are so highly combustible that you don't really want to mess with it, but it's a director's medium and, ultimately, the director is going to set the tone," Damon explained to MTV News.

"They're the arbiter of taste at the end of the day, so if you trust the director, you can pretty much go with any type of material. So that's why I rolled the dice on this one was really because of Cameron."

Damon, who plays a widower attempting to keep his family together in We Bought a Zoo, went on to say that he believes his own parenting skills match up to his character Benjamin's in the film.

"I think they're both pretty good actually. I do my best in real life and I think this guy is trying his best," he said. "One of the things I really related to about the movie and the character is that he's desperately trying to do his best as a dad, which leads him to do this kind of incredibly desperate thing."

Watch the trailer for We Bought a Zoo below: