The “middle-aged” cast of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey suffered from back pain while filming their action scenes, Matt Damon has revealed.
The 55-year-old actor stars as Odysseus, the hero of Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic, who faces a gruelling, 10-year journey back home to Ithica and his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) following the Trojan war.
Speaking with Radio Andy host Andy Cohen, Damon said that the actors also sufered from cut feet due to the sandals they wore on set.
He said: “A lot of us are middle-aged people and what we got was back pain.
“Oh my God, running through Troy, like, you know, it’s all stone.
“You’re in these sandals and they’re very real. Our feet were all scuffed up.”
He said that the back pain was worse than the scratches and cuts.
“It was a heavy Advil movie in those weeks when we were doing all that action stuff.”
Damon underwent a physical transformation for the film, dropping his weight to 167 pounds (76 kilograms) and growing a beard for a year before production began.
He told People magazine: “It was more about just getting really, really physically fit.
“Which just really involves changing your diet. I stopped eating gluten, among other things.
“You have to just be very, very intentional about everything you put in your body.”
Earlier, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Damon revealed that some of the most talked-about shots of his muscular transformation in The Odyssey were made possible by a female stunt performer with “the greatest arms I’ve ever seen”.
The stunt double has since been identified as a Canadian named Devyn Dalton.
“There are those shots where you see these giants looming over me,” Damon said.
“It was almost 100 per cent my arms in the movie, but you got to give it up where it’s due.”
The cast also includes John Leguizamo, 66; Jon Bernthal, 49; Samantha Morton, 49; and Hathaway, 43.
Hathaway announced in June that she is expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman.
The Odyssey has received acclaim from critics, with some hailing it as Nolan’s best film to date.
It also set a record as his biggest box office debut, taking US$264 million (£196 million), according to Universal Pictures.
