Matt Damon has said Ireland is deeply special to his family, revealing that his daughter describes it as the one place in the world where she could see herself living.
In an exclusive Irish interview, the Hollywood star spoke to RTÉ Entertainment alongside Tom Holland ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
Damon plays the legendary Greek hero Odysseus in the epic action film, while Holland stars as his son, Telemachus.
Watch: Matt Damon and Tom Holland on Ireland, family roots and making The Odyssey
When the conversation turned to Ireland, Damon reflected warmly on the months he and his family spent living in Dalkey in Dublin during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The actor became an unlikely Irish lockdown icon in 2020 when he was photographed after a sea swim carrying a SuperValu shopping bag.
The image quickly took on a life of its own online, with social media users joking that the Oscar winner was carrying a “bag of cans”. Damon later revealed that the bag had, rather less dramatically, been filled with towels for his children.
Watch: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o and Robert Pattinson star in The Odyssey
Asked about his favourite memories of Ireland, Damon said he could happily talk about the country “for hours”.
“That place is so special for me, for my entire family,” he said.
“That was where we locked down for Covid, and we could not have been more embraced. We could not love that place more.”
Damon had travelled to Ireland to film Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, but remained in Dalkey with his family after production was suspended at the beginning of the pandemic.
He said the experience left such a lasting impression that one of his daughters still talks about making Ireland her home.
Matt Damon in Dalkey in May 2020 with Jessica Berry (10) and Ashleigh Berry (12) / Image: @mummycooks
“My daughter has said to me, of all the places she’s been around the world, she says, ‘That’s the place I could go and live,’” he said.
“It was an amazing experience.”
Damon acknowledged that his family had been particularly fortunate at a time when many people were facing enormous hardship.
“I felt guilty because I knew how people were really struggling,” he said.
“And we just had a fairy tale, and we’ll never forget it.”
When it was suggested that he had earned honorary Irish status, Damon laughed: “I hope so. I hope so. I will take it. I will happily take it.”
(l-r) Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron and Zendaya attend the world premiere of The Odyssey in London
Holland also spoke about his own close connection to Ireland.
The British actor has Irish roots through his grandmother, Teresa Quigley, who was from Tipperary, and said he regularly visited family in Ireland while growing up.
“I love Ireland. I’ve got family there, we used to go there all the time as kids,” he told RTÉ Entertainment.
Holland also looked back on the summer he spent filming the medieval drama Pilgrimage with Jon Bernthal.
“For me, it would be watching Jon Bernthal experience Ireland for the entire summer,” he said.
“We shot there when I was 16 and he absolutely fell in love.
“I’ve got family there and we used to go there all the time as kids. But watching him fall in love with Irish people, Irish culture… we were in Galway, he couldn’t believe the landscapes that we were shooting in.
“So spending the summer with Jon and seeing him just love Irish people was awesome.”
Matt Damon as Odysseus and Zendaya as Athena in The Odyssey
While the pair were happy to reminisce about Ireland, the conversation also turned to the scale of The Odyssey and the physical demands of bringing Christopher Nolan’s epic to the screen.
The production took the cast and crew across locations in Greece, Italy, Morocco, Iceland and Scotland, with filming in places including Nestor’s Cave, Voidokilia Beach and Methoni Castle in the Peloponnese, as well as the Italian island of Favignana.
That sense of scale is especially clear in the film’s gruelling boat sequences and fight scenes. Asked whether those scenes had taken a physical toll, Damon did not hesitate.
“Absolutely, yes,” he said.
“Being out there, it felt almost more like an expedition than a movie.
“The whole crew, the whole cast and everybody was there. There was no better place to go hide or sit, no trailer or anything like that. We were out there.
“So whatever happened, if we got rained on, if it was cold, it was happening to everybody.
“Looking around and seeing everyone else enduring it made it a lot easier. Nobody wanted to be the squeaky wheel, so everybody just sucked it up.”
Watch: Director Christopher Nolan on why he shot The Odyssey entirely in IMAX
Holland admitted that even before facing the conditions himself, watching his castmates return from filming gave him a sense of what lay ahead.
“I remember being in the hotel and watching all of these guys come back from days of work and just feeling dread, thinking, ‘Wow, I work tomorrow,’ and having sleepless nights,” he said.
The actor also highlighted an intense fight sequence filmed on a mountainside, revealing it took weeks of rehearsal before cameras rolled.
“It was something that was really important to me because it’s such an establishing moment for my character,” he said.
“We rehearsed that fight scene every day for weeks and weeks leading up to shooting it.
“It was a very challenging location. It was breathtaking, and there was definitely a strong reason for us to be there.
“But climbing up the mountain that day, shooting that sequence, and then climbing back down, was a labour of love for sure.”
The Odyssey opens in Irish cinemas on Friday.