Matt Damon "got over" his fear of snakes for his new movie We Bought a Zoo.

The film follows a father who moves his young family to the countryside to renovate and re-open a struggling zoo.

For one scene Matt had to handle snakes.

His co-star Scarlett Johansson confessed to teasing the actor about his cowardly behaviour.

Matt admits that the mocking encouraged him to swallow his fear and just get on with it.

"I did. I got over it," he told ET. "Scarlett told me I was a douche bag and that's how it started. And then they were putting them on the kids and the kids were totally fine with it. Everyone else was fine with it and handlers were like, Come on they're fine.'"

Despite her taunting, Scarlett revealed she wasn't that comfortable with the snakes either.

But the blonde beauty was eager to but on a brave face in front of Matt.

"I think that day everybody did come to set kind of casual, like, Oh here we are! Looking at these buckets of snakes,'" she laughed. "You have to just suck it up. That was my 20 seconds of courage."