Matt Damon says he has moved past the point in his life where he is willing to put his body through “dangerous” changes for a movie role.
The 55-year-old Academy Award-winning actor — who portrays Odysseus, the legendary king of Ithaca, in Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated movie, “The Odyssey” — opened up about the physical transformation he underwent for the role and explained why he refuses to put his body through any additional strain.
“If I would’ve put weight on, that would’ve been dangerous, and it’s not something I’ll do anymore,” he told People magazine. “I was happy to do it earlier in my life.”
This time, Damon said, it was “more about getting physically fit, which involves changing your diet.”
“You just have to be very intentional about what you put in your body,” he said.
During an appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast earlier this year, Damon revealed he lost a significant amount of weight after former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce remarked that the “Good Will Hunting” star looked “pretty yoked up” in viral photos from the set.
“Yeah, I was in really good shape,” Damon said. “I lost a lot of weight.”
According to Damon, Nolan had a very specific vision for Odysseus.
“He said he wanted me lean but strong,” Damon explained. “It’s a weird thing.”
The Oscar winner said one major dietary change played a key role in helping him reach that goal.
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“I literally, just because of this other thing I did with my doctor, stopped eating gluten,” Damon said. “I used to walk around between 185 and 200 pounds. And I did that whole movie at 167 pounds.”
“I haven’t been that light since high school,” he added. “So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet.”
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During an appearance on “Sunday Sitdown with Willi Geist,” the Academy Award winner opened up about the grueling physical demands of portraying Odysseus, admitting the ambitious production pushed both the cast and crew to their limits.
“He was like, ‘This movie’s gonna be hard.’ And I looked at him like, ‘I’ve made, I don’t know, 80 movies,'” Damon recalled of one of his early conversations with Nolan. “And he goes, ‘No. This movie’s gonna be really hard.’ He, to his credit, was not lying.”
“It was definitely the hardest movie I’ve ever done just because it was so ambitious, just because what he was trying to do,” Damon continued. “The prep and all that I had to do as a guy in his 50s, that was its own challenge. That was my own cross to bear, away from everybody.”
Damon said filming took the cast across demanding locations, from beaches in Morocco to mountaintops and boats in unpredictable conditions.
“There was a lot of physical discomfort. It felt more like an expedition than a movie,” he said. “Everybody was pushed to kind of the limit of what they could do. But the beauty of it is you look around and everyone is going through it with you.”
On Tuesday, Damon detailed Nolan’s “practical” requests when it came to filming — including avoiding stunt doubles.
“Odysseus is an archer, and he wanted me to be able to speed load a bow, which, it’s hard to get the arrow knocked on the string,” Damon said during an appearance on “Today.” “I sat in my apartment with a bow and arrow for months. Whenever I was sitting around, if we were watching something with the kids, I would practice speed loading, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of times.”
“It’s like a little detail, but it’s funny … being an actor, you get tasked with doing kind of weird stuff sometimes,” he added.
