Matt Damon had to grow a real beard for The Odyssey
Matt Damon had to grow a real beard for The Odyssey because director Sir Christopher Nolan is "not a big fan of wigs and fake beards".
Matt Damon had to grow a real beard for The Odyssey.
The 55-year-old actor plays the lead role of Odysseus in Sir Christopher Nolan's 2026 fantasy movie - an adaption of Homer’s Greek epic - and now it's been revealed the director ordered him to grow some lengthy facial fuzz because he doesn't like "wigs and fake beards".
Nolan told Empire magazine: "I’m not a big fan of wigs and fake beards. You want the physicality of real hair, so that you can put a firehose on the guy and do all the things we need him to do."
Damon - who is dad to four daughters - added to the publication: "I’d never tried to grow a beard that size. I mean, there are about 100 things to take a beard off my face before it can get that long, starting with my kids. But yeah, he wants it all real."
The Martian star went on to admit working on the movie was the toughest experience of his career in Hollywood and he tried to explain it to his longtime friend and collaborator Ben Affleck.
Damon said: "When I got home, Ben [Affleck] was asking me about it. And I said, ‘Every location on this movie would have been the toughest location on any film I’ve ever done.
"And every day of shooting would have been the toughest day of shooting on any other movie I’ve ever done'."
He added that one particular sequence - which was shot on a boat - was extremely hard for him and his castmates.
The actor said: "This giant ship we had, the Draken, they had to row this thing. A lot was asked of them; there was a lot of discomfort.
"And they were just stalwart, you know? They were there for three, maybe four months of it.
"And I’m still on a text chain with all of those guys, and we still text each other every day, checking in on each other. Yeah, it was an experience. Nobody will ever forget this."
The Odyssey follows the king of Ithaca Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he struggles to return home after the fall of Troy, confronting monsters, gods and the consequences of his own choices along the way.
Meanwhile, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) fight to protect their fractured kingdom as they await the man who may never return.
The Odyssey also stars Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal, Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway and Elliot Page.
Page recently declared it was “such a joy” to reunite with Nolan for The Odyssey after working on 2010’s Inception together.
Speaking at New York Comic Con, the 38-year-old actor said: “I was so excited to be thought of for [The Odyssey] and to be asked to come back to work with him.
"I loved working with him on Inception and loved being a part of that movie. I was just completely jazzed and excited, and [I] basically went and met with Chris and talked about the part, then sat in a room and read the script. It was such a joy to come back.
"To come back now, as you can imagine, being more comfortable in yourself makes these sorts of projects more enjoyable. To get to have a Chris Nolan experience again now meant so much to me selfishly."
