The “Odyssey” actor went down to 167 pounds to portray Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s film.

Matt Damon is done doing this ‘dangerous’ thing for movies

The “Odyssey” actor went down to 167 pounds to portray Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s film.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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July 15, 2026 11:23 a.m. ET

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Matt Damon. Credit:

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- Matt Damon is sharing the “dangerous” thing he will no longer do for film roles.

- The actor lost weight in order to portray Odysseus in *The Odyssey.*

- He will, however, no longer gain weight for roles.

Matt Damon is putting his health first.

The 55-year-old actor recently opened up about the physical transformation that he underwent to star in Christopher Nolan’s *The Odyssey* — and why he will no longer gain weight for any part that he takes moving forward. In preparation to play his character, Odysseus, a warrior who embarks on an arduous journey home following the Trojan War, Damon revealed that he went down to his high school weight of 167 pounds.

“I didn’t change it in an unhealthy way,” he told PEOPLE. “I think if I had done the opposite and put weight on, that would have been dangerous and it’s not something I’ll do anymore. I was happy to do it earlier in my life.”

Marc Piasecki/WireImage

Instead, Damon explained that he underwent a “whole lifestyle change” that saw him focus on getting physically fit and cut out gluten from his diet.

“You have to just be very, very intentional about everything you’re putting in your body,” he added.

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While Damon lost weight for Nolan’s epic adventure, he previously gained an additional 30 pounds in order to portray whistleblower Mark Whitacre in Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film, *The Informant!* In the years since, however, he advised other actors against following in his footsteps.

That includes Josh Hartnett, who revealed in a 2024 *Tonight Show *interview that his *Oppenheimer* costar helpfully warned him against putting on an extra 30 pounds for his role *after* he’d already gained it.

“He’s like, ‘You’re gonna spend the rest of your life trying to get that weight off and it’s never gonna come off because your body’s gonna want to get that weight back on,’” Hartnett recalled Damon telling him at the time. “‘You’re just gonna keep growing back out to that size, and you’re going to try and get it off, but it’s just gonna go back.’”

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To make matters worse, Hartnett said that Damon continued to tell him “over the course of the production” just how hard it would be to shed that weight in the future.

“I was like, ‘Thanks, Matt,’” he teased. “Thanks for telling me this now. I’ve already gained it.”

Damon and Zendaya in ‘The Odyssey’.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Studios

In recent years, Damon has stopped gaining weight for roles and instead utilizes body prosthetics to portray larger body types on screen, including in his pal Ben Affleck’s 2023 film, *Air*.

Affleck told *Entertainment Tonight* at the time that they not only “put Matt in a body suit,” but also “shot him with a lens that expanded his face a bit.”

He added, “I’m so accustomed to seeing Matt Damon as the kind of Jason Bourne, can’t lose, gonna win no matter what. And I wanted to try to create more of that sort of underdog feeling.”

*The Odyssey* sails into theaters on July 17.

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