Matt Damon seems like he’d be really cool to hang with, except he just doesn’t have the time right now.

His last film, Hereafter, didn’t do well at the box office, but he’s getting Oscar buzz already for his role in the remake of True Grit. His wife Luciana just had another baby girl. He’s also the cofounder of Water.org, a charity that helps provide people in developing countries with safe drinking water and sanitation.

He says having kids helped inspire his work with the charity.

It’s very hard to go to these places like India, Ethiopia, and Kenya and not connect to all of these kids as your own. Once you’ve had children, it’s very hard to turn your back on a child….Every 15 seconds, a kid is dying because he or she doesn’t have access to clean water and sanitation. It’s pretty staggering. In America, you can just walk over to the faucet and get a drink of water. So it’s hard to wrap your brain around the notion that there are little girls who can’t go to school because they’re spending their days gathering water. Dehydration is a ridiculous way to die in this day and age.

[Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 19, 2010]

His kids also affected his filming for True Grit, and like all new parents, he has given up the luxury of sleep.

I asked them to schedule me so I wouldn’t be away from my kids for too long. I’d shoot for four days in Texas, and then I’d get off the plane and run home and say to my wife, “Oh, I had this line…” and I’d start acting it out for her.

I’ve learned that if you decide not to sleep, you pick up all these extra hours in the day. We came home from the hospital the other night, and we were up with the baby and the alarm went off. And I realized, “Oh, s—, I’ve got to take the other kids to school!” Their lives don’t stop because we had a baby. So it’s a little relentless, but I mean that in a good way.

[Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 19, 2010]

In the interviews I’ve seen, Matt has a great sense of humor and seems grounded for one of the hottest actors in the world.

And it’s nice to see his devotion to his family even when he’s filming (I’m talking to you, Ben Affleck!)

True Grit opens December 22.

If you want to support Matt’s charity, go to gift.water.org and buy a reusable water bottle.