Matt Damon treated his turn as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with the gravity of a career capping role.
In a new Time profile on Nolan’s ambitious retelling of Homer’s epic, Damon admitted he approached the project “like the last movie I’d ever do.”
He explained, “There aren’t a lot of people in their mid 50s as protagonists in these epics. I looked at this like the last movie I’d ever do.”
Though not retiring, Damon emphasized how rare such opportunities are.
He praised Nolan’s decision to shoot the film entirely on IMAX with practical sets and effects, likening the director’s approach to David Lean’s classic epics.
“Movies like this are not getting made anymore,” Damon said. “To do this without a green screen, the way that David Lean would have done it, I don’t know anybody, with the exception of Chris, that’s even trying to do that.”
Damon described the production as physically demanding but deeply rewarding.
“When you’re uncomfortable—and you are most of the time, physically, just by nature of what’s required to get these shots—if you turn and look over your shoulder, he’s no more than five feet away and doing the same thing without complaint. There’s something really nice about being a soldier in the foxhole and looking over and the general is right next to you.”
The film boasts a star-studded cast including Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, Lupita Nyong’o as Helen and Clytemnestra, and Travis Scott as a bard.
Theron, reuniting with Damon after The Legend of Bagger Vance, called his role “the part of a lifetime.”
Nolan’s The Odyssey, the first feature shot entirely on IMAX, opens in theaters July 17.
