BECOMING ODYSSEUS HAS seen Matt Damon undergo another physical transformation. The 54-year-old is starring as the Greek king of Ithaca in the upcoming Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey, which will release in July 2026, and has been pictured looking ripped for the upcoming film.
Standing on a rocky shoreline in Italy with a long grey beard and wearing just a ragged brown cloth wrapped around his waist, Damon’s shoulders and abs were popping as debris stuck to his body. He’s put in extensive effort to get into such impressive shape, too, with long-time friend Ben Affleck jokingly commenting on the image in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
‘Look at my man trying to act like he didn’t know they were taking this picture – nobody’s fooled. You went out there and flexed. Somebody told him the paparazzi were out there,’ Affleck said. ‘No, I have to respect it. It’s a lot of hard work, and it doesn’t get any easier when you have the very long grey beard. That’s one of the things I respect about Matt is that he just works very hard, and you can see that if it requires a certain physique for the role where he’s got to be a warrior, he’ll get it done. Very impressive.’
How Matt Damon has previously trained for roles
While Damon’s exact training for the role isn’t clear, he spent a lot of time getting into shape earlier in his career for specific role, most notably for the Jason Bourne franchise. Rather than lifting heavy weights – Damon has completely avoided barbell back squats and deadlifts – the Hollywood actor has focused throughout his time training on more functional, bodyweight movements with his trainer Jason Walsh. A long-standing shoulder problem and a back injury meant Walsh needed to develop strength in Damon while preventing injury and promoting mobility.
‘It’s about understanding the basics,’ Walsh said in 2016. ‘People always want to add more weight. We don’t even touch a weight, it’s all calisthenics work. It’s about connecting to the body again and then maybe putting weight on, or starting to hold moves for longer periods of time.’
Weighted pull-ups, push-ups, weighted single-leg squats, bear crawls and planks comprised the majority of his workouts a decade ago as a result, with long-distance runs and sprints on the VersaClimber machine helping with his conditioning. ‘He loves challenges,’ Walsh added. ‘We got to the point where we were doing 100 pull-ups two or three times a week. We’d see how many sets it takes to get 100. Once you lose some of that excess weight, pull-ups get a lot easier. He was doing 30-some pull-ups per set.’
Damon’s dedication to stunts
As well as working hard in the gym to achieve such impressive results, Damon has also spent a lot of time refining his stunts with stunt performer James Newman. In a now-deleted episode of the Action for Everyone podcast, reported by Screen Rant, Newman highlighted how dedicated to the scenes Damon was.
‘I had the opportunity to make some action with a talented group of people for the film and also had the opportunity to make some action with a talented group for the film,’ Newman said. ‘Matt definitely wanted to be more efficient because that’s the character. Odysseus is really the only war scene character along that journey. The guys he has with him have fought with him but Odysseus himself is like, “I’ve lived and breathed battle,” and so that makes him more smart, and that’s why he’s so good. Matt definitely understood that and then we were trying to play that up as well. So he isn’t going to do flashy things.’
This article originally appeared on Men’s Health UK.
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