LOS ANGELES -- Matt Damon had just finished doing a take for the courtroom scene in his new film, "The Informant!" in which his real-life character tells his family and colleagues he's sorry for all his wrongdoings and the pain he caused, when director Steven Soderbergh told him he was headed in the wrong direction.

The script, written by Scott Z. Burns, had Damon performing the real words of his character, which were taken from the court transcript, but Soderbergh didn't want to hear the usual apology.

"After the first take, Steven just walked up and just goes, 'No. Nope,' " remembers the actor. "And I went, 'What?' And he says, 'I want you to do it like an award acceptance speech.' "

That tells you right there that there is something different about "The Informant!" which opens Friday.

Based on the book by former New York Times writer Kurt Eichenwald, "The Informant!" tells the story of a real-life whistleblower who was at the center of one of the biggest price-fixing investigations in U.S. history, involving Archer Daniels Midland. The giant corporation was at the heart of a multinational conspiracy to control the price of the food additive lysine. Heavy, complicated stuff, right? Well, yes, but "The Informant!" is a comedy.

"You know a lot of people who read that book would assume that it was going to be like a Michael Mann film, and it really isn't," says Soderbergh. "This film is an example of me just looking at the material and asking, 'What's the best visual presentation for this idea.' "

One of the reasons that Soderbergh turned a dramatic undercover case on its head was the bizarre circumstances involving Mark Whitacre, Damon's character. Seen as one of the bright stars on ADM's horizon, Whitacre alerted the FBI about his involvement in the scheme in 1992 and secretly spied on the company over the next three years. However, the feds were unaware that the high-ranking executive suffered from bipolar disorder, which led to some wild and grandiose behavior on his part. (He thought after the investigation that he'd be made president of the company.) Even more mind-boggling was the fact that while Whitacre was taping his co-workers, he was embezzling millions of dollars from the company.

As the star of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and the "Bourne" trilogy, Damon is no stranger to playing characters who aren't sure of who they are, but that wasn't what attracted him to the role of Whitacre.

"I think I'm just drawn to good writing," Damon says about the role, for which he gained 30 pounds. "The script is terrific, and the characters complicated. And like 'Ripley,' there's a lot going on ... This was a story that ultimately revolved around an unreliable narrator, which in itself I thought was just a great idea. And the way the information was doled out to the audience. It seemed like a really entertaining movie but was also a role that I could have fun with."

Part of the fun in getting ready for the role was eating whatever he wanted.

"Gaining weight was way too easy," says Damon, who also wore a wig, a fake nose and cheek plumpers to alter his appearance.

"But taking it off was a total pain in the ass. You have to watch what you eat and exercise, and that's no fun."

Damon never talked to Whitacre, who after serving a prison sentence is today the COO of a California biotech firm.

"Once Steven decided to do this tonal shift and make it a black comedy, he lost total interest in talking to anybody who is really involved because we weren't doing the re-enactment of what happened," says the 38-year-old actor.

However, they did shoot in Decatur, Ill., where ADM is located.

"Though we shot in Whitacre's house, and drove his actual cars and said the things verbatim for the most part that he said, we did it tonally in a different way," says Damon. "You do absorb a lot being in the actual places where these things occurred. I remember talking to Melanie Lynskey (who plays Whitacre's wife) about that when we were having the same conversations that they had in the same house and in the same room that they had them. That was a little eerie. And who knows what you pick up from that?"

You'll see a lot of Damon in the next six months. He has two more films - Clint Eastwood's "Invictus" and "Green Zone," from "Bourne Ultimatum" and "Bourne Supremacy" director Paul Greengrass.

"I haven't had a movie open since 'The Bourne Ultimatum,' which was in 2007. So they just ended up getting stacked up. 'Green Zone' was held over till next year. Clint's movie is coming out in December."

In December, the History Channel will air "The People Speak," which Damon executive produced. The project is an offshoot of historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," a book Damon referenced in his Oscar-winning script for "Good Will Hunting." The Cambridge, Mass., native knew the Boston University professor growing up and says getting "The People Speak" on the air was a 10-year project.

"It came out really, really well," says Damon proudly. "It's coming out on the History Channel, but we're also hoping to get it in schools. Because the format we came up with is actors reading historical documents without editorializing. It's really powerful, actually.

"And then we have musicians singing songs throughout American history. Like John Legend sings 'No More Auction Block,' and Bruce Springsteen sings 'This Land Is Your Land.' Eddie Vedder sings 'Masters of War.' Bob Dylan is in it, and he sings '(If You Ain't Got the) Do Re Mi.' "

Actors involved include Josh Brolin, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Don Cheadle, Kerry Washington, Rosario Dawson, Morgan Freeman, Viggo Mortensen and Sean Penn.
Damon, who attended Harvard before dropping out to pursue an acting career, was thrilled so many artists took part.

"It was just one of those things where we had material that everyone was interested in that they gave up their time. Obviously, we couldn't pay any of them, and so it's good that they did."

And he's hoping that he'll be able to get the program in schools as teaching aids. "Because it's great if a history teacher can talk about Frederick Douglass, but if you can show Morgan Freeman reading a passage of Frederick Douglass, that might get kids more engaged in learning about history."

The father of three daughters ("fatherhood's great"), Damon has no shortage of projects. Right now he's about to film "The Adjustment Bureau," based on a Philip K. Dick short story, and there is always the possibility of another "Bourne" movie.

"Obviously, the studio wants to do it; so it really looks like it could happen. But we don't want to do it unless we can make a movie that fits in with the other three. We don't want the quality to go down at all, and it's a trickier story than you would think at first glance. Having made three of them. at this point we're running a little short of story."

As far as his own scriptwriting career, Damon says he's not writing now.

"I really haven't had time or pressing need. Once the employment dries up again (he laughs), I'll have to start writing again. Or unless I find a great piece of material that I want to adapt and direct, I'm not writing."