Matt Damon "negotiated" an acting hiatus with his wife - but Christopher Nolan changed his plans.

The 52-year-old actor agreed to take a break from the movie business after discussing the issue with his wife Luciana, until Christopher offered him a role in 'Oppenheimer'.

Matt - who has been married to Luciana since 2005 - told Entertainment Weekly: "This is going to sound made up, but it's actually true.

"I had - not to get too personal - negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. I had been in 'Interstellar,' and then Chris put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn't in the rotation, but I actually negotiated in couples therapy ­- this is a true story - the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called. This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household."

Matt stars in the biographical thriller film alongside the likes of Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh.

And the Hollywood star previously revealed that he jumped at the chance to join the project, which centres on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped to develop the first nuclear weapons.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "[Christopher] said to me, ‘This is the kind of movie that they used to make in the ’90s.'

"It feels like when an Oliver Stone movie would come out and you’d go, ‘That’s one of the movies I’m going to see this year no matter what, because everyone’s going to be talking about it.’ But those movies have disappeared from the multiplex."