Matt Damon brands The Odyssey ‘the hardest’ movie he’s ever made

Matt Damon has admitted his upcoming epic The Odyssey is “the hardest movie” he’s ever made.

Matt Damon has admitted The Odyssey is “the hardest movie” he’s ever made.

The Academy Award-winning actor plays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, in the upcoming epic and while he was initially dismissive of director Sir Christopher Nolan’s warnings about the scale of the task ahead, he quickly realised it was going to be a gruelling shoot.

Speaking on Sunday Sitdown with Willie Giest, Matt, 55, said: “[Nolan] was like, ‘This movie’s gonna be hard.’ And I looked at him like, ‘I’ve made, I don’t know, 80 movies.’

“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.

“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.”

Filming locations included beaches in Morocco, mountaintops, and boats in unpredictable conditions, but Matt praised Christopher for leading by example as he pushed his cast and crew to their limits.

He said: “There was a lot of physical discomfort. It felt more like an expedition than a movie.

“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.

“Directing is by far the hardest job on set. When you’re out there kind of in the middle of a storm and you’re soaked and you’re cold and you’re like, ‘Man, I’m in discomfort right now,’ it is helpful to turn and see the person with the harder job … looking like a drowned rat, just as cold, just as wet, and never complaining.”

Matt previously revealed he got back to his high school weight ahead of shooting The Odyssey.

He told Jason and Travis Kelce on their New Heights podcast earlier this year: “I was in really good shape. I lost a lot of weight. [Nolan] wanted me lean but strong.

“Just because of this other thing that I did with my doctor, I stopped eating gluten.

“I used to walk around at between 185 and 200, and I did that whole movie at 167. And I haven’t been that light since high school. So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet.”