Matt Damon has opened up about long-term best friend Ben Affleck’s reaction to The Odyssey, revealing that his Good Will Hunting co-star gave him a compliment he’ll never forget.
Based on Homer’s Greek epic, The Odyssey is the latest Hollywood blockbuster from Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan. Damon stars as war hero Odysseus, with Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Anne Hathaway among the supporting cast.
Critics are already raving about the film, but speaking alongside Zendaya, The Martian star Damon revealed that there were only a handful of people whose opinions on The Odyssey he cared to know.
One of them is Ben Affleck, Damon’s long-term collaborator who he met back in school. The pair have been through “a whole hell of a lot together” in their 45-year friendship, Damon told MTV UK, adding: “He’s one of the great loves of my life, I will say about Ben.”
Damon then recalled how when Affleck saw The Odyssey, “I got a phone call from him that I think I’ve been waiting 45 years to get.”
“He didn’t stop talking for an hour,” he said. “It was like he’d seen the movie 20 times. He got absolutely everything, every detail, he somehow soaked it all in in one viewing.”
Damon said that he’d also been nervous to see the reaction from his second eldest daughter Isabella, as the 20-year-old had proven a “very tough critic” of his films in the past.
“She said, ‘Dad, I’m proud of you,’” said Damon. “Now, this is a kid who, I made a movie called The Great Wall once, and she calls it ‘The Wall’… She’s like, ‘Dad, there’s nothing great about that movie.’
“She’s a very tough critic, and so [with] those reactions, I feel like the movie’s already come out.”
Fortunately for Damon – who is also father to daughters Gia, 17, and Stella, 15, with wife Luciana, and Alexia, 27, from a previous relationship – the reviews for The Odyssey couldn’t look better ahead of the film’s cinema release on Friday (17 July).
The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey gave the film five stars, writing: “As a feat of pure adaptation, Nolan has achieved something I admittedly thought was near impossible. His stamp is all over the film – this is intellectual, brutalist, muscular Hollywood fare – yet it never wavers in its commitment to, and comprehension of, its source text.”
The Telegraph’s Robbie Collins and Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also awarded The Odyssey full marks; as did The Times, Evening Standard and Metro.
