"Every single location on this movie would’ve been the hardest location on any other movie I’ve ever done," Matt Damon said of filming 'The Odyssey'
Credit: Alex Prager/GQ (2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Matt Damon still looks as toned as he did while filming The Odyssey in GQ‘s new cover story on the upcoming blockbuster
- Damon has said in recent months that he weighed 167 pounds while filming Christopher Nolan’s new movie, well below his usual weight
- The Odyssey is in theaters July 17
Months after finishing filming The Odyssey, Matt Damon still looks in action-hero shape.
Damon, 55, showed off the toned physique he achieved to play the mythological ancient Greek hero Odysseus in GQ's new cover story for the movie alongside writer-director Christopher Nolan and costars Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, published Tuesday, June 2.
Damon, the movie's lead, said in a January appearance on the New Heights podcast that he weighed in at 167 pounds while filming the upcoming action epic and that he "used to walk around between 185 and 200 pounds."
“I haven't been that light since high school," he said at the time. "So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet.”
Fans got their first glimpses at Damon's body transformation for the role as far back as March 2025, when he was photographed sporting a muscly physique and toned abs on the movie's set for the first time.
Credit: Alex Prager/GQ
Damon's longtime friend Ben Affleck has notably teased Damon over the attention he's received for shirtless photos of him on set, but as Damon related to GQ, his look is indicative of what he described as a unique experience shooting the movie through August 2025.
"Every single location on this movie would've been the hardest location on any other movie I've ever done," Damon told the outlet. "And they just went back-to-back.”
According to GQ, The Odyssey filmed for 91 total days across Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and Universal Studios' lot in the United States.
“The joke on the crew was we didn't have a single easy location,” Damon said elsewhere in the piece. “Every time we'd go somewhere, we'd be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier.' And then it's raining sideways and it's f—ing freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer.' ”
As Damon said, even the scenes they shot on a studio lot involved "two jet engines blowing so much water at us" and still required a "cold, wet, and a little bit miserable" experience. At the very end of GQ's cover story, though, Damon said that he truly loved his experience working on the movie, despite its physical challenges.
"The funniest thing happened, which is just all of the things that might have been difficult for me at an earlier point in my life weren't difficult. They became fun," he told the outlet. "Like being wet and cold was not a hardship. It was actually something I felt really lucky to be experiencing. It felt temporary and like a gift. So it was very strange. It's not something I've ever experienced. That's why I kind of sound like a born-again Christian. It's a feeling that I've wanted and finally had.”
Credit: Alex Prager/GQ
Holland, 30, costars in The Odyssey as Odysseus' son Telemachus. Pattinson, 40, portrays Antinous, the leader of a group of men on Odysseus and Telemachus' home island Ithaca who seek to wed Odysseus' wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) years after Odysseus left the island to fight in the mythical Trojan War.
The cast also includes Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, Charlize Theron, Benny Safdie and John Leguizamo, among others.
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The Odyssey is in theaters July 17.
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