the greatest arms I have ever seen<\/a>.\u201d Her friends were sending her clips of the interview as it was ripping through the internet.<\/p>\nDamon had been discussing one of the film\u2019s pivotal scenes when he gently corrected his interlocutor, who had mistakenly assumed the biceps in the shot were his own: They belonged to Dalton, who some might be surprised to learn is his stunt double. She\u2019s a woman standing in for a male actor, for starters; she\u2019s also 4-foot-6 to Damon\u2019s roughly 5-foot-10 frame.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit of movie magic, Damon explained. To film the battle against the man-eating Laestrygonians, Nolan used a technique called \u201cforced perspective\u201d to make Odysseus\u2019 army appear minuscule.<\/p>\n
A shot of Dalton from behind in the scene, holding a sword and ready to pounce at the giants, is used in one of the posters for the movie.<\/p>\n
Dalton, born and raised in Canada, trained as a dancer initially and started performing stunts in 2011 after she was cast in the \u201cPlanet of the Apes\u201d trilogy. Her more recent credits include \u201cWeapons\u201d and \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has found herself in such high-voltage action sequences that she can never tell her mother what she\u2019s working on because \u201cit freaks her out,\u201d Dalton said. \u201cI just tell her \u2018I\u2019m going to work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is the first time Dalton has done stunts for a male A-lister \u2014 a rare feat in an industry where, according to the SAG-AFTRA union, women make up little more than 20 percent of stunt performers.<\/p>\n
In a conversation with The New York Times, edited and condensed for clarity, she discussed her latest role and her other stunt work.<\/p>\n
Is it common practice for a woman to double for a male lead? Have you done that before?<\/p>\n
Definitely not common. I think men have been doubling for women for longer in the industry. But with stunts, the main thing is, who is the best fit for what they\u2019re looking for, physically? And, most importantly, who has the specific skill set needed? Increasingly, with wardrobe, hair and makeup, we get to do movie magic and transform people, and it doesn\u2019t matter so much about gender. This is the first time doubling for a Hollywood leading man. I never thought I would have that on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Have you received this kind of specific shout-out from a leading actor before?<\/p>\n
It is uncommon because, even though you\u2019re in front of the camera, if you\u2019re doubling and you\u2019ve done your job right, the audience shouldn\u2019t know it\u2019s you. Part of our job is being hidden. I have to say a huge thank-you to Matt for being so generous.<\/p>\n
Were you and Damon on set together working on that fight choreography?<\/p>\n
Yeah. Most of the time, on any film I\u2019ve been on, you end up working with the actor and being there on the same day because you\u2019re both a part of a sequence and you\u2019re both portraying the same character.<\/p>\n
When doubling for someone, I\u2019ll always specifically watch like, what foot did they walk with first? People also just have little tendencies, like they might lean to one side or move a certain way. So I study all of that and try to mimic it exactly. That\u2019s what sells it so well on camera.<\/p>\n
Did you need any special training for this role?<\/p>\n
This has been years of work building out my skills. I try to be very versatile by doing a lot of different training methods to just stay ready, so that whenever the phone rings, I\u2019m like, \u201cOK, I\u2019m good to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the thing with stunts \u2014 the training never ends. In the past, I\u2019ve done a few really cool underwater fight scenes, and so I took courses that focused on water safety, breath holding and cold water because a lot of the times you\u2019re not working in a warm situation and so you have to learn how to manage the temperature. And you\u2019re in costume and makeup and you have to be underwater with your eyes open.<\/p>\n
Are there stunts you\u2019ve had to do that scared you?<\/p>\n
I think the fear for me always comes from a place of setting very high standards for myself. I always want to do a really good job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, the actor Devyn Dalton received, quite possibly, the world\u2019s biggest compliment. She was in New Zealand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1591,95561,174,113978,80113,158,9,11,10,113976,109085,113975],"class_list":["post-310316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-actors-and-actresses","tag-christopher","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-damon","tag-matt","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nolan","tag-stunts-and-stuntmen","tag-the-odyssey-2026-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}