“[With] Time’s Up, a lot of those women are my dear friends and I love them and respect them and support what they’re doing and want to be a part of that change…but I should get in the back seat and close my mouth for a while,” Damon concluded.

Damon has been widely criticised after weighing in on the multiple sexual abuse allegations made against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein (with whom he worked on the 1997 film Good Will Hunting). Damon insisted he was unaware of Weinstein’s alleged abuse of women, but his follow-on comments were widely criticised by women – including his former co-star and girlfriend Minnie Driver.

“I think it’s wonderful that women are feeling empowered to tell their stories … [but] I do believe that there’s a spectrum of behaviour, right?” Damon told ABC News.

“There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?” he added. “Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”

People who commit “rape and child molestation or whatever” should go to prison, Damon continued, but “the other stuff is just kind of shameful and gross”.

Driver later took to Twitter to call Damon out on his comments, saying:

“[Good] God, SERIOUSLY?” she wrote. “There are so many men I love who do NOT frame the differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault and rape as an excuse, or worse – [as women’s] problem. Such bollocks.”

Matt Damon says “sorry” for his damaging #MeToo comments