Matt Damon says he had to slim down to his high school weight for new film in which he plays a mythical ancient Greek hero: 'Everyone pushed themselves to the limit with this movie'

The American actor Matt Damon revealed that he lost so much weight for “Odyssey”, the new film of the director Christopher Nolan and one of the most anticipated in 2026, that at one point during the filming he ended up weighing the same as he did in high school, Variety magazine reports.

“I was in really good shape. I lost a lot of weight. [Nolan] he wanted me lean but strong. And because of another thing I did with my doctor, I went gluten free. I'm usually between 84 and 91 kilograms, and I made this film weighing about 76 kilograms. And I haven't been this easy since high school. So it was a lot of training and a very strict diet,” he explained in an interview for the latest episode of the New Heights podcast.

Variety notes that Damon's efforts while filming “Odyssey” are very different from the times when the now 55-year-old actor had to put on weight for his roles. Damon gained 14 kilograms for the feature film The Informant since 2009, “eating like crazy and drinking dark beer,” as he himself recounted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly at the time. “In between meals, on set, I would eat a No. 1 McDonald's menu and then add Doritos on top. It was absolute heaven,” said the American actor.

Odyssey marks a new collaboration between Damon and Nolan after the one for Interstellar and Oppenheimer – the big winner of the 2024 Academy Awards and a huge success at the worldwide box office, grossing nearly a billion dollars.

“Odyssey”, a Christopher Nolan brand film that tells an epic story

OdysseyNolan's adaptation of Homer's epic poem of the same name, will also be the director's first feature after Oppenheimer it brought him his first career Oscar and made him significantly richer.

Speaking about the new film on the podcast, Damon said he was amazed at how Nolan managed to do it Odyssey to produce the first Hollywood feature film shot entirely with IMAX cameras and also recalled the locations around the world – such as Greece, Sicily, Iceland and Morocco – used for filming.

“I'd get there and just start laughing,” Damon said. “I was thinking, 'No one would want to film here! Obviously he wants to film here. It fits his style perfectly'. He has an amazing team. His team is incredibly strong,” he said.

“And everyone pushed themselves to the limit on this movie, we met all our shooting days. We actually finished even earlier than scheduled. It was an amazing experience,” Matt Damon emphasized.

Damon stars in the new film alongside a world-class cast

He plays the main character Odysseus, better known in Romanian as Ulises, in the feature film, alongside an impressive cast, which includes Tom Holland, Mia Goth, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Benny Safdie, Jon Bernthal and John Leguizamo.

Odyssey follows the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus on his arduous journey home after the Trojan War. The story attributed to the Greek poet Homer was written over 2,700 years ago and remains one of the oldest accounts still appreciated by modern readers.

According to Hollywood media sources, Christopher Nolan received from the Universal Pictures studio a budget of 250 million dollars for Odysseydouble the one he had available for Oppenheimer.

That means it will be one of the most expensive films he's ever directed, although comparisons are never exact as the numbers aren't adjusted for inflation. For example, his most expensive film – The Dark Knight Rises -, had a budget of exactly 250 million. But it appeared in 2012, while Odyssey it comes 14 years later, after several years of rampant inflation that drove up production costs and movie tickets.

The movie Odyssey will appear in cinemas in Romania on July 17, simultaneously with its release in the US and the rest of the world.