Celebrity6 min(s) read
Published 16:00 28 Jul 2026 GMT
The gym where Matt Damon built his Odyssey body is in the basement of his apartment building.
It has a trap bar, a barbell with no rack, some dumbbells, a cable machine, and a Versaclimber. That's about it.
"You'd be shocked at how crappy it is," his trainer Gabe Stump recently told Vogue.
In that gym, over five months, Damon dropped from somewhere around 200 pounds to 167.
He's 55. He told the Kelce brothers on New Heights that he hadn't weighed that little since high school.
Now it's going on an IMAX screen the size of a building, no CGI, with Christopher Nolan behind the camera.
"Sadly, there's no shortcut," he said.
"It's all diet and exercise."
The brief was oddly specific.
Nolan and his team had a clear picture of what Odysseus should look like after 20 years of war and wandering.
Not bulky, but not a bodybuilder - lean and weathered but obviously strong.
"They basically came back and said, 'we see Odysseus as someone who's obviously a warrior and very strong, but he's gone through this 20-year odyssey, and through that time he's gotten more and more lean,'" Stump recalled.
So the goal was to strip about 15 pounds of fat off Damon while keeping as much of his existing muscle as possible.
Stump had been working with him since after Air, where Damon carried extra weight to play Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro.
The three years since had been about longevity and general fitness.
Nothing fancy, just keep him moving and keep him healthy.
Then the Nolan call came and everything changed.
Four strength days a week. One cardio day. Upper body Monday and Thursday, lower body Tuesday and Friday, cardio on Wednesday.
Each session ran 45 minutes to an hour, six to eight exercises, and that was it. Go home.
The strength work wasn't about getting bigger. It was about sending a signal.
"That's what maintains the size you have and tells your body to prioritise body fat as fuel," Stump said.
"If you're not using the muscle, your body will consume that tissue instead of fat."
Upper body was a mix of push and pull.
Flat dumbbell bench one session, incline the next.
Chest-supported row one day, pull-ups the next.
Main lift first, then accessory stuff for the muscles that would actually be on camera. Three or four sets, eight to 10 reps on the heavy stuff, 12 to 15 on the rest.
Lower body was trickier because of the equipment problem.
No squat rack meant no back squats. They used the trap bar deadlift as their main heavy movement and worked around the limitations with landmine squat variations and hip thrusts.
"We had a regular barbell, but no rack," Stump said - they had to make do.
For context, Damon's previous trainer Jason Walsh had him doing 100 pull-ups two or three times a week during the Bourne films.
"He loves challenges," Walsh told Men's Health.
"Once you lose some of that excess weight, pull-ups get a lot easier. He was doing 30-some pull-ups per set."
Damon hates cardio.
"He hates doing cardio. But who doesn't, right?" Stump said.
Wednesdays were flexible.
Sometimes it was intervals on the Versaclimber. Sometimes HIIT circuits with medicine ball slams, kettlebell swings, and jump rope.
Sometimes, if the week had already been heavy, Stump would just tell him to put on a weight vest and walk uphill for 45 minutes.
"It doesn't have to be super fast. Just get a good sweat going and then come home."
Stump was blunt about this from day one. The gym was not going to be what got Damon lean. The food was.
"I told him at the outset that this is a diet and nutrition goal. Anytime you're talking about losing body fat, that's a calories-in thing. You're not going to control that by exercising more."
Damon cut gluten completely. He hasn't gone back.
"I'm done. I'm gluten-free everything," he told the Kelces.
"I found a gluten-free beer. 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."
Alcohol went. Processed sugar went. Protein stayed high to protect the muscle mass.
The rest was clean carbs and whole foods. Stump said he barely had to coach Damon on the nutrition side because the man has done this before, multiple times, across decades of Hollywood transformations.
"He didn't really need that much help with his diet, and I think that's because he's done this so many times."
Damon isn't the only person in The Odyssey who has gone through a physical transformation to get here.
Elliot Page, who also appears in the film and previously worked with Nolan on Inception, has been photographed recently with six-pack abs from boxing training.
Page has spoken about how much more comfortable he is in his body since transitioning, and described his relationship with acting as 'so much better' now.
Robert Pattinson, who plays Antinous in The Odyssey, has taken a famously unconventional approach to physical preparation over the years.
He once quit acting entirely after a particularly intense early role, only to get the Twilight call days later.
Damon's approach is the opposite of dramatic. Basement gym. 45-minute sessions. No gluten. Show up every day. Don't overthink it.
The Odyssey opened July 17 and has been a huge hit.
It's Nolan's adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic, shot on new IMAX film technology.
Tom Holland plays Telemachus. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope. Zendaya is Athena. Charlize Theron is Circe. It is, by any measure, the biggest ensemble Nolan has ever assembled.
Damon gets his shirtless scene on an IMAX screen.
At 55. In a body built in a crappy basement gym on a programme most people could follow without quitting their jobs.
Stump put it simply: "The most impressive thing about him is his consistency.
"He's really a guy that will show up, day in and day out, and put in the work."
167 pounds. Five months. No shortcut.
The results are there to be seen, on a 70-foot-tall screen.
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Published 12:51 23 Jan 2018 GMT
Published 11:04 09 Jan 2026 GMT
Matt Damon has opened up about how he transformed his physique for a new movie role - and the one thing he had to cut out to drop 30lbs.
The actor, 55, is set to take on the lead role of Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's upcoming movie, Odyssey, set to be released in July 2026.
The upcoming epic action fantasy film is an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek Odyssey, following Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, and his long and perilous journey home to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), following the Trojan War.
As well as Damon and Hathaway, the all-star cast also includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Lupita Nyong'o.
Damon addressed his preparation for the movie role on Jason and Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast on January 7, explaining the lifestyle changes he had to make.
Jason said that Damon looked "pretty yoked up" in some of the early shots that had been released from the movie, to which the actor responded that he got into "really good shape and lost a lot of weight".
Damon compared it to how the Kelces would prepare for games in the NFL, as being on shape becomes necessary as part of your job.
Revealing how he did it, Damon explained: "[Nolan] said he wanted me lean but strong, and so it's a weird thing, I don’t want to bore the s*** out of you but I literally, just because of this other thing I did with my doctor, stopped eating gluten.
"I used to walk around at between 185 [pounds] and 200 and I did that whole movie at 167. I haven’t been that light since high school.
"So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet."
Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat, rye, barley, and many processed foods made using these ingredients, including breads and pasta, and can cause a dietary intolerance in some individuals with Celiac disease.
This occurs when the body's immune system responds to the gluten, damaging the lining of the small intestine, per the Cleveland Clinic.
Despite Damon crediting a gluten-free diet for his weight loss, doctors have long dismissed it as a method to shift the pounds.
According to the Cleveland Clinic: "There’s absolutely no evidence that simply getting rid of gluten will result in weight loss. But if you eat a gluten-free diet you may make healthier food choices because you’re more aware of how to read food labels.
"Eating gluten-free often may cause you to eat more whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and lean meats. These diet changes are often healthier and lower in calories."
As it stands, a completely gluten-free diet is only recommended for those who need to do it for health reasons.
Published 16:24 25 May 2021 GMT
Mark Wahlberg is known for his svelte physique — but like many other actors, he's willing to completely transform his body for his craft.
The actor was spotted on the set of his latest film Father Stu, and fans are saying that he is looking unrecognisable amidst a reported 20-pound weight gain.
According to the actor's personal chef, he managed to pack on the pounds by eating eight meals a day in order to have a total daily intake of around 7,000 calories. Woah!
But Wahlberg isn't alone — here are 12 other actors who gained incredible amounts of weight to do their characters justice...
To play the former Vice President, Dick Cheney, Bale gained 40 pounds by "eating a lot of pies".
But that's not all, the actor also shaved his head, bleached his eyebrows, and his co-star Steve Carell claimed that he did specific exercises to thicken his neck.
Bale, however, shirked off the praise he received for his gruelling preparation, telling Yahoo: "[I was trying to provide] a blank canvas through which these incredible [hair and makeup] artists could create the various ages of Cheney. . . . They would shave my head every day, bleach and pluck eyebrows."
Understandably, Bale has since said that he won't be undertaking such intense roles in the future. "I've become a little bit more boring now, because I'm older and I feel like if I keep doing what I've done in the past I'm going to die. So, I'd prefer not to die," he explained to E! in 2019.
Damon enjoyed gaining weight for his role as the vice president turned CIA informant, Mark Whitacre, in The Informant!
"I definitely got doughy," the actor told Entertainment Weekly. "I started eating like crazy and drinking dark beer. Between meals on set, I'd eat a No. 1 Value Meal at McDonald's and then Doritos on top of it. It was absolute heaven."
Sounds like a pretty sweet role to me!
While training for Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank consumed a whopping 210 grams of protein every day for three months.
When speaking about the experience, Swank told Movieweb that it was "just the worst thing ever".
"My training was two and a half hours of boxing and approximately an hour and a half to two hours lifting weights every day, six days a week. The producers asked me to gain 10 pounds of muscle. I gained 19 pounds of muscle. I started at 110 and went to 129. I would drink my egg whites because I could never eat 8 to 12 egg whites in a sitting."
Hardy didn't have an easy ride when preparing to play Bane in the Dark Night Rises. In fact, some fans of the Batman franchise didn't believe that the actor had bulked up enough for the role.
Defending his weight gain, Hardy told CineMovie that he got up to 190 pounds.
"I'm at 190 pounds. Bat fans want me to be over 220lbs. 400lbs. I'm like dude! Batman is like Superman, Spider-Man — he belongs to so many people. So many people love him. He belongs to them, and when you step into that kind of character, you are going to fail. And be judged. I'm human, and I do read things. I read the comments, and I cry. I can't cry for everybody. I just give them a job, and be the best that I can be. Just trust me. I trust Nolan."
Reynolds told Men's Fitness that he gained 25 pounds of muscle for Blade Trinity after sticking to a 3,200-calorie daily diet, and doing workouts six days a week for three months. This was a routine that the actor also adhered to when going to work on the Green Lantern.
His trainer, Bobby Storm, told WebMD that he worked out 90 minutes every day for six to seven months to bulk up to 200 pounds.
"For a romantic comedy, he needs to shrink down a bit," Storm explained. "For Blade and Green Lantern, he was 200 pounds and 8% body fat. For rom coms, he's about 180 and 11% body fat."
In order to gain 47 pounds for his role in Gold, McConaughey told Graham Norton that he had a "yes" rule.
"Pizza night could be any night and if the kids wanted to go bowling at midnight on a school night that was a great idea too," he told the host. "Cheeseburger and beer for breakfast was a great idea too. I really relaxed on the rules! I was fat and happy."
Charlize Theron gained 50 pounds in three months for Tully by eating at all hours of the day, according to Entertainment Tonight. The experience, however, was not enjoyable for the actor, and it took her a year and a half to lose the weight.
Speaking about the experience to the publication, she said: "I wanted to feel what this woman felt, and I think that was a way for me to get closer to her and get into that mindset. I got hit in the face pretty hard with depression.
Bale undertook an impressive transformation for his role in American Hustle. The actor actually was so unrecognisable that his co-star, Robert de Niro, had to ask who Bale was when he arrived on set.
The actor estimated that he went from 185 pounds to 228 for the role, which meant that he gained 43 pounds. He told People that he achieved it by, "Eating doughnuts, a whole lot of cheeseburgers, and whatever I could get my hands on."
Bale also shaved his head, and assumed a slouch that was so forced that he accidentally herniated a disk in his back.
Per People, Zellweger packed on the pounds to portray Bridget Jones. For the first movie, Bridget Jones' Diary, she gained 30 pounds.
For the second, The Edge of Reason, she went from a size four to a size 14 by eating 4,000 calories a day.
For the third film, Bridget Jones' Baby, director, Sharon Maguire, stressed that the actor didn't need to gain weight for the role — citing shifting societal attitudes. "Sharon was hoping we could show that Bridget had achieved her ideal weight, but at the same time it didn't mean her life was perfect," the 52-year-old told the Daily Telegraph.
Ultimately, Zellweger told Vogue UK, as reported by Hello, that she did end up gaining a little weight to reprise the part in 2016.
For his role in American Sniper, Cooper bulked up to 225 to portray US Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle.
Speaking to Men's Health about the experience, the A Star is Born actor revealed that he worked with trainer, Jason Walsh, twice a day to help him gain muscle in 10 weeks.
The publication details: "In the first workout, beginning at 5 a.m., they focused on structural exercises like deadlifts and squats to build a foundation solid enough to hold the extra mass. The second workout, late in the afternoon, was more focused on traditional muscle-building exercises. Cooper needed both types of training to convincingly portray Chris Kyle."
Emma Stone went through a physical transformation to portray real-life tennis icon, Billie Jean King, in Battle of the Sexes.
The 32-year-old gained 15 pounds of muscle over three months in order to portray King as she prepared for her legendary tennis match with Bobby Riggs.
Per USA Today, Stone worked with trainer, Jason Walsh, who is the founder of Rise Nation. Her exercise regimen involved walking with dumbbells, and 300-pound hip thrusts. Eventually, the La La Land star was able to deadlift up to 180 pounds and could do pushups with 50 pounds of chains on her back. She also added two high-protein shakes with "hundreds of calories" into her diet.
Speaking to the publication about Stone's work ethic, Walsh said: "She took it seriously. She wanted to do the story justice. She needed to be resilient and to have the psyche of being really strong."
De Niro underwent quite the body transformation for the Martin Scorses's Raging Bull, in which he played legendary boxer, Jake LaMotta.
In a 2013 interview, the actor revealed that he trained with LaMotta for almost a year, doing one-on-one sparring sessions, and going through at least "1,000 rounds" together in New York City.
As a result, he added more than 20 pounds of muscle to his body, and obtained the physique of a real boxer during filming. He even competed in three organised bouts, where he won two, per Vanity Fair.
La Motta was so impressed with the actor's dedication that he said that de Niro could have fought professionally if he so desired.
Published 11:25 19 Nov 2018 GMT
Hollywood actors often have to go through some dramatic body transformations for the sake of a role, particularly when it comes to getting completely jacked for the sake of an action movie. We've written articles before about some of the incredible muscles that actors have gained in the past. But now Scottish actor James McAvoy has blown us all away with how ripped he looks in the trailer for the Split sequel 'Glass.' Once upon a time, McAvoy was best known for portraying the bookishly young version of Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies, but now he looks more like the Incredible Hulk!
However, after a number of news outlets falsely claimed to know the details of his workout regime, (with many alleging that he was consuming a gut-busting 6000 calories a day) McAvoy decided to set the record straight himself on Instagram. In a post to his many followers, McAvoy claims that the 6000 calory myth was from a previous interview about his workout routine for Split which was taken out of context.
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BcjpusTHxrZ/]]
Elaborating on his actual workout regime, he wrote: "The truth is that this time around I gained more muscle weight and got leaner by not counting a single calorie. Good old @magnuslygdback had me eating a lot but nowhere near the 6000 calorie mark. In fact, we didn't count a single calorie. We counted macros ... I think probably a healthier way of tracking intake."
He added: "I'm sure most people would never dream of copying the advice of some article/s on the internet about some actor but I know some would and I'd be gutted if they laboured under bad advice or worse yet seriously harmed their health. 6000 a day might work well for somebody but I've got zero experience or info on that being the case. Guys and girls in the gym and out ... this IS NOT how I got the results I got. Please don't copy. enjoy your workouts or non-workouts. Stay healthy and eat well to enjoy if you can! [sic]"
Wow, that was pretty responsible of him to clear the air on this whole issue. Just as well nobody injured themselves trying to gorge that much food on a daily basis.
[[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-EAUYoz9Y]]
Glass is due for a US release on January 18, 2019 by Universal Pictures, and stars Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy and Sarah Paulson. The movie's synopsis states: "Following the conclusion of Split, David Dunn pursues Kevin Wendell Crumb's superhuman persona of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters while the shadowy presence of Elijah Price, going by 'Mr. Glass', emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men."
Sounds like this is going to be a really thrilling conclusion to Split's whole storyline. Personally, I can't wait to see this movie in the theatre when it comes out.
Monumental schnitzels:
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BbqM70ND4TW/?taken-by=thehughjackman]]A familiar "Aussie style" breakfast:
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BZDzeLKjgp_/?taken-by=thehughjackman]]Or this one, containing the all-important Vegemite:
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BX0Ifipj0OI/?taken-by=thehughjackman]]And whatever this plate of "heaven" is:
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BalrTLMDM6j/?taken-by=thehughjackman]] Not a bad diet at all, it all looks good to me!Though this may seem like an impossible transition to make in just half a year, O'Connor explains that he had a little bit of an advantage compared to most other people. "Six months might seem fast but - because I was a fitness instructor before the breakup - I already had a few years of training behind me," he said, "so I had a decent amount of muscle already."
[[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/BZRv9xwHNHb/?taken-by=dwayne_oconnor23]] Having been through such a tough time, O'Connor knows how difficult it is to get motivated to lose weight and become healthier. But he has some advice for others who might be in a similar situation: "The way I see it is like this... You can't overreact to every bit of positive or negative change in your life. "The negative, once evaluated with a level head might not be as bad as once thought and if you become upset or discouraged overall negatives that happen to you, your [sic] gonna be miserable all the time, because 's**t happens' ... "Take everything as it comes, enjoy the small things and try find the middle ground." So, if you were looking for some motivation to help get yourself through a tough time, why not take a leaf out of Dwayne's book and hit the gym until you're totally ripped.
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