Matt Damon shares one extreme thing he’ll never do for a movie again
Matt Damon has taken on some of Hollywood’s most iconic roles, but there’s one thing he refuses to do for a part.
The 55-year-old stars in Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated epic The Odyssey, one of the year’s biggest upcoming film releases. Damon plays Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, who embarks on a perilous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War to reunite with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and their son, Telemachus (Tom Holland).
The journey is anything but straightforward. Along the way, Odysseus must survive violent storms, outwit the Cyclops, and overcome countless deadly obstacles. Damon also underwent a dramatic physical transformation for the role, reportedly losing 167 pounds.
“I didn’t change it in an unhealthy way,” he told PEOPLE. “I think if I had done the opposite and put weight on, that would have been dangerous and it’s not something I’ll do anymore. I was happy to do it earlier in my life.”
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Detailing his weight loss, Damon says one of things he gave us was gluten as part of a ‘whole lifestyle change’.
“It was more about just getting really, really physically fit, which just really involves changing your diet, just a whole lifestyle change,” he explained. “You have to just be very, very intentional about everything you’re putting in your body.”
He described the shoot as ‘by far the hardest move to the most challenging movie I’ve ever been a part of’, describing the Nolan epic as feeling, ‘more like an expedition than a movie’.
“And if you were cold and wet, you just turned and you looked and Chris was just as cold and just as wet and going through it,” Damon recalled.
But Damon said that after filming for a week and using the weekend to sleep and recover, he would be up and ready to go for more. “I loved every minute of it,” he said.
The film has become one of the most anticipated releases of 2026, with IMAX 70mm screenings selling out well in advance as moviegoers scramble to experience it on huge screens.
It is also the first feature film shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, but despite adapting Homer's sprawling epic, Nolan was forced to keep the film under the three-hour mark because of the physical limitations of IMAX 70mm projection. The final runtime comes in at 2 hours and 52 minutes after the director trimmed the story to fit the format.
The Odyssey has a huge ensemble cast and in addition to Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, audiences will also see Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Elliot page and more.
The film reaches cinemas in the UK on Friday, 17 July.
Topics: Celebrity
Greg Harris