In Stillwater (in theaters July 30), a dramatic thriller loosely based on the story of Amanda Knox (the American who was accused of killing a roommate in Italy in 2007), Damon plays an American oil-rig worker from Oklahoma who travels to France to help his daughter (Abigail Breslin), imprisoned for a murder she claims she did not commit.

“It’s about a normal guy, a roughneck from Oklahoma, who suddenly finds himself in this foreign country and he can’t speak the language and there are all these cultural barriers,” says Damon, 50. “It looks as if it might turn into a Liam Neeson movie, but it is not [like] I know karate and I can save her because I am in the CIA. My character is doing his best to fight for his daughter because he knows she’s innocent.”