Interview

For the first time in his 25-year film career, Matt Damon says that — courtesy of Behind the Candelabra’s over-the-top nature — he finally embraced wardrobe fittings. Fittings that had him donning everything from a bespangled, bare-cheeked thong to a periwinkle chauffeur getup with matching silver boots to a white-and-turquoise lounge set that would look equally at home on a grandma at the grocery. “I loved it,” Damon says proudly of his country-bumpkin-goes-Hollywood progression. “More than any other movie I’ve been on, actually, the wardrobe and the hair and the makeup really made a difference — and the props, all [...]

Depending on how you look at it, the genesis for Behind the Candelabra, HBO’s extravagant and surprisingly emotional Liberace biopic, happened nearly 14 years ago — or more than 40. The film’s director, Steven Soderbergh, 50, says he watched the beloved pianist and “World’s Greatest Showman” with his parents as a kid and recognized that this was no ordinary entertainer. Revisiting those old clips years later, Soderbergh knew his opinion hadn’t changed a bit. By then, he was filming his 2000 Oscar-winning smash Traffic with Michael Douglas. “I was in the middle of playing the drug czar and Steven said, [...]