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Matt Damon revealed how he slimmed down to his “high school” weight to play legendary Greek hero Odysseus in his highly-anticipated movie “The Odyssey.”
The 55-year-old actor reunited with director Christopher Nolan, with whom he previously collaborated on the hit movies “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer,” for the upcoming action fantasy film, which is an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.”
During an appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast “New Heights,” Damon opened up about how he achieved his body transformation after the retired Philadelphia Eagles player noted that the “Good Will Hunting” star was “getting pretty yoked up” in viral photos from the movie’s set.
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“Yeah, I was in really good shape,” Damon said. “I lost a lot of weight.”
The Academy Award winner explained that Nolan, 55, had a vision for how he wanted Damon to physically portray Odysseus.
“He said he wanted me like lean but strong,” Damon said. “It’s a weird thing.”
Damon went on to say that he made a key change to his diet that helped him shed the pounds.
“I literally, just because of this other thing I did with my doctor, stopped eating gluten,” he said. “I used to walk around between 185 and 200 pounds. And I did that whole movie at 167 pounds.”
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“I haven’t been that light since high school,” Damon admitted. “So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet.”
Damon, who has previously undergone major body transformations for roles, noted that having the help of a personal trainer is invaluable.
“Trainers are like, ‘What are we doing?’ And they can kind of do anything,” he said. “It’s just having kind of a clear goal and setting it.”
Damon drew comparisons between his preparations for physically demanding roles and the Kelce brothers’ routines while playing in the NFL.
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“When I do that or when I do the ‘Jason Bourne’ movies or whatever, it feels almost like a season. I would imagine what that feels like for you guys – when you’re preparing,” Damon said. “It’s like just part of your day. It’s part of your job, right? It’s like you get really routinized about it and kind of build your day around all that stuff.”
“That’s kind of the physical side of getting ready,” he added.
Damon also told Jason and Travis, 36, that he has continued to maintain a gluten-free diet after completing production on “The Odyssey.”
“I’m done,” he said. “I’m gluten-free everything.”
“I found a gluten-free beer,” Damon said with a laugh. “It’s been so long since I’ve had gluten, I can’t tell if it’s good or not. So, that’s a good sign.”
“It’s working. It’s working,” Jason told him.
Damon has previously opened up about drastically transforming his body for roles. In the 1996 war drama “Courage Under Fire,” Damon lost between 40 and 50 pounds in about 100 days to play a Persian Gulf veteran dying from addiction and trauma.
The actor later said that his extreme weight loss was dangerous and revealed that a doctor told him that he “could have shrunk my heart permanently.”
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“I went too far,” Damon said via the U.K. outlet Express. “I got sick, and I wouldn’t do that again because it was just too much.”
“At the same time, it helped the performance,” he continued. “I didn’t have to act at all; I was a wreck. I was getting dizzy spells and hot flashes. I didn’t say anything to anyone for a while because I was afraid I might be really ill.”
Meanwhile, Damon has said that he had a more enjoyable experience when he gained about 30 pounds to play real-life whistleblower Mark Whitacre in 2009’s “The Informant!”
“It was very, very easy to gain the weight. Very, very fun,” Damon told reporters in 2009, via NBC. “I just basically ate everything I could see for a few months.”
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