Matt Damon had negotiated with his wife time off from acting — with this one caveat

Everyone knows about Matt Damon’s enduring partnership with Ben Affleck, but his marriage was put to the test when he was very keen on working with someone else on his new film, “Oppenheimer.”

Damon says he had told his wife, Luciana Barroso, that he would take a break from acting, unless he got the opportunity to star in a movie directed by Christopher Nolan, who — you guessed it — directed “Oppenheimer.”

“This is going to sound made-up, but it’s actually true,” Damon said on Entertainment Weekly’s “Around the Table” with Nolan and co-stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr.

“I had — not to get too personal — but had negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off. And I actually had enough foresight.”

Damon and Nolan previously worked together on 2014’s “Interstellar.” Damon said he reached an agreement with his wife, with whom he has four daughters, that he would only sign on to a project with Nolan.

“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,” he said.

“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. It was a moment in my household.”

“So, even modern psychology has a caveat?” Downey joked.

“For Chris!” says Damon.

“Just checking,” says Downey. “You heard it here first!”

Damon has talked about how his wife keeps him grounded, particularly when he found himself enduring a bad experience while making a movie that he didn’t identify by title.

“I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor,” he told "Jake’s Takes" earlier this month. “And what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort.”

You can see if Damon and Nolan made movie magic of their own when “Oppenheimer” opens July 21.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com