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Matt Damon is opening up about how achieving his dramatic physical transformation for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” “just kind of took over my life.”
The 55-year-old actor appeared nearly unrecognizable starring legendary Greek hero Odysseus in the mythological epic, which dominated the global box office after its July 17 release with a roughly $264 million opening weekend — the biggest debut of Nolan’s career.
During a recent appearance on “Live with Kelly and Mark,” Damon revealed what it took to fulfill the 55-year-old director’s vision for the role.
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“He said, ‘I just want him to look lean and strong like somebody who’s a veteran of the Trojan War and can handle himself, but wouldn’t pass up a meal if it was offered to him,'” Damon recalled Nolan telling him.
“And that’s kind of the hardest shape to get into, you know, that kind of lean-strong thing,” the actor added. “But it just kind of took over my life.”
In the movie, which is an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey,” Odysseus spends 10 years trying to return home after fighting in the 10-year Trojan War, enduring shipwrecks, battles with monsters, starvation, imprisonment and constant physical hardship on his journey.
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Damon told hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos that he underwent an intense six-month process to realistically portray the weathered, battle-hardened warrior.
The “Good Will Hunting” referenced his January appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast “New Heights,” in which he revealed that he had slimmed down to his “high school” weight for the role. While speaking with the NFL stars, Damon shared, “I used to walk around between 185 and 200 pounds. And I did that whole movie at 167 pounds.”
“I was talking to the Kelce brothers on their podcast like six months ago, and we were talking about it,” he told Ripa and Consuelos. “It felt more like an athlete’s regimen, kind of like those guys who have to just dedicate every moment of their day to thinking about everything.”
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Damon described how he followed a routine in which food portions were measured and every aspect of his diet was carefully monitored.
“Everything’s weighed,” he said. “It’s just very, very intentional about everything.”
Damon also reflected on adopting a gluten-free diet to shed the pounds. He noted that he had not previously realized how many food and drink items contain gluten.
“It’s in a lot of things, but there are a lot of great things that it’s not in,” he said, before citing rice and potatoes.
However, Damon acknowledged that he had to make some difficult sacrifices to stay gluten-free.
“Listen, I had to give up beer. That was tough,” he said.
“Is there gluten in beer?” Ripa asked.
“There sure is,” Damon replied. “Yeah. There are some gluten-free beers though. I’m learning about all this.”
“It’s in bread. It’s in pasta. It’s in a lot of the stuff that we love,” he added.
During a July interview with People magazine, Damon recalled that his commitment to remain gluten-free was tested when his wife Luciana, 50, and his four daughters Alexia, 27, Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15, visited him while he was filming “The Odyssey” in Italy.
“I promised them I was gonna have pasta with them, and right after I ordered it, I just called the waiter back, and I was like, ‘I’ll just please have a steak instead,’” Damon remembered.
“And the kids were like, ‘but you promised!’, and I said, ‘I’ll have a bite of each of your pastas,’” he continued. “So I took a bite of each of theirs.”
“I was just in it, I just, it was gonna be four or five more months. It’s all or nothing at this point,” Damon added.
While speaking with Ripa and Consuelos, Damon explained why he has continued to maintain a gluten-free diet after completing production on “The Odyssey.”
“I just felt so much better,” he said.
Damon has previously opened up about drastically transforming his body for roles. For the 1996 war drama “Courage Under Fire,” Damon lost between 40 and 50 pounds in about 100 days to play a Persian Gulf veteran dying from addiction and trauma.
The actor later said that his extreme weight loss was dangerous and revealed that a doctor told him that he “could have shrunk my heart permanently.”
“I went too far,” Damon said via the U.K. outlet Express. “I got sick, and I wouldn’t do that again because it was just too much.”
“At the same time, it helped the performance,” he continued. “I didn’t have to act at all; I was a wreck. I was getting dizzy spells and hot flashes. I didn’t say anything to anyone for a while because I was afraid I might be really ill.”
Meanwhile, Damon has previously said that he had a more enjoyable experience when he gained about 30 pounds to play real-life whistleblower Mark Whitacre in 2009’s “The Informant!”
“It was very, very easy to gain the weight. Very, very fun,” Damon told reporters in 2009, via NBC.“I just basically ate everything I could see for a few months.”
However, Damon recently shared that he is no longer willing to subject himself to extreme weight fluctuations for roles.
While discussing transforming his body for “The Odyssey” in an interview with People magazine, Damon noted, “I didn’t change it in an unhealthy way.”
“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,” he continued. “I was happy to do it earlier in my life.”
Damon has previously shed light on other aesthetic changes that he made to play Odysseus, including growing a long beard and keeping it for a year.
While speaking with USA Today, Damon said that he and Nolan agreed that a fake, hand-laid beard was out of the question due to the water stunts that the actor had to perform for the movie.
“Any movie problem, the best solve is a practical one,” Damon said. “In that case, it was like I was going to be thrown around. I was gonna be thrown into the water. Like a beard that wasn’t — that didn’t stay, you know, a hand laid beard would just come off in salt water.”
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He continued, “And so there was no point trying to hand lay a beard, which I’ve done for other movies and works very well. But in this case, [Nolan] was like, ‘The only practical solution is just just to have the beard.’”
“So I had a big bushy beard for, you know a year or so. My kids thought I looked like Santa Claus,” he added with a laugh.
Nolan is known for his commitment to authenticity, which is a hallmark of the Oscar-winning director’s filmmaking. “The Odyssey” marked a reunion for Damon and Nolan after they previously collaborated on the hit movies “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer.”
While speaking with Ripa and Consuelos, Damon praised Nolan’s directorial style and preference for practical effects.
“It’s amazing working with him,” Damon said. “He’s a great actor’s director. He’s just so fun to work with.”
“And he gets this elite crew,” he continued. “They’re so good and up for how he wants to do things. He wants to shoot everything in camera. There’s no CGI. So if you see a thousand people in a battle, there were a thousand people there. If there are ships in the background of a shot, those are real ships.”
“And the amount of coordination it takes between all these departments, that’s actually, in this day and age, extraordinary,” Damon added. “It really is. It’s great to be a part of. It felt like we were doing a movie from 70 years ago, which is very cool.”
Damon told Ripa and Consuelos that for him, committing to “The Odyssey” required little deliberation. Recalling the moment Nolan first offered him the lead role, the actor said the director spent about 15 minutes catching up before mentioning he was thinking about going back to work.
“And I’d like to offer you the central role,” Damon recalled Nolan saying.
Damon said he immediately accepted, prompting Nolan to ask, “Don’t you want to hear what it is?”
“I was like, ‘Sure,'” Damon said. “And he goes, “It’s a two-word pitch: The Odyssey.”
“My heart skipped a beat,” he recalled. “It’s an incredible part to play for an actor. The role of a lifetime.”
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