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Matt Damon stars as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
The actor revealed during a recent appearance on Radio Andy how the costumes caused scuffs and back pain to the cast
Damon previously spoke about the lifestyle changes he made to get in shape for the project
A certain quality about Matt Damon caught up to him on his latest project, The Odyssey.
In Christopher Nolan’s nearly three-hour adaptation of Homer’s famed ancient Greek epic, Damon portrays Odysseus, and he said that he took the physicality of the job on the chin despite it leaving him with aches and pains.
Appearing on Radio Andy, the actor was asked by host Andy Cohen if “all the action sequences” were filmed with the actors wearing sandals. His simple answer was yes, which he followed with an explanation of how he was feeling his age in certain moments.
Matt Damon in costume in ‘The Odyssey’Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
“A lot of us are middle-aged people and what we got was back pain because, oh my god, running through Troy [one of the movie’s settings], it’s all stone,” Damon, 55, said. “You’re in these sandals, and they’re very real.”
He continued, “Our feet were all scuffed up, but more than the little scratches and cuts on your feet, it was the back pain for us. It was a heavy Advil movie in those weeks when we were doing that action stuff.”
Damon pushed himself off screen too, deciding to carve himself into 167 lbs. of muscle to play the king and warrior. The transformation, he told PEOPLE, involved “a whole lifestyle change.”
Matt Damon ‘The Odyssey’Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
“It was more about just getting really, really physically fit,” he said of his training. “Which just really involves changing your diet. I stopped eating gluten, among other things.”
“You have to just be very, very intentional about everything you put in your body,” he added.
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During the project’s global press tour, Damon also appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he shared a behind-the-scenes tidbit on costar Tom Holland’s demanding costume, which ended up “choking” him. The Oscar winner added that he mistook Holland’s gesture addressing the wardrobe malfunction as an acting cue.
Holland plays Damon’s onscreen son, Telemachus, whose mother Penelope, Queen of Ithaca, is played by Anne Hathaway.
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