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Our January issue, featuring Matt Damon in a Band of Outsiders polo and a Rogues Gallery necklace. Read the full cover story right now on GQ.com.

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Matt Damon Is Wicked Smaht

Our current GQ cover fella, shown here lifting cartoonishly large weights like a boss, is annoyingly good at everything— acting, being an Internet meme, and talking to “ailing Siberian tigers” (seriously, it happens in his new movie!). One thing he’s notoriously not so good at: letting himself be profiled in magazines. Writers always try to get him to spill secrets about himself—not gonna happen—and so when that fails, they have no Plan B. So GQ’s Amy Wallace tried a different approach: getting others to talk about him first. Read the full piece here. A choice cut below:

[Soderbergh] calls Damon “probably the least vain person in his position”—meaning movie star—”out there. He has no interest in protecting any sort of idea of himself as an actor.”

What he does have, however, is an interest in using his power as an actor to champion the underdog and right what he perceives to be wrong. He has thrown his full weight (and his money) behind a charity, Water.org, that seeks to provide sources of clean water to the Third World. Over the years, he has spoken up about public-school teachers (he supports them), the middle class (he thinks they’re getting the shaft), and President Obama (he feels he’s not delivering on his promise). At the White House Correspondents’ dinner this year, Obama responded directly, saying, “Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau…”

Damon tells me he didn’t see that speech live but got thirty e-mails from friends the next morning and watched the president’s remarks online. “I have to say, it was pretty funny,” he says, getting in his own dig: “Whoever came up with it, it was a terrific joke.”

[Photograph by Ben Watts]