Matt Damon has collected awards, blockbuster hits and glowing reviews throughout his career. But this time, the compliment that mattered most came from one of his daughters.
Reflecting on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Damon admitted the epic adventure pushed him further than any project before it.
“This movie was by far the hardest movie to the most challenging movie I’ve ever been a part,” he told People magazine, describing the production as “more like an expedition than a movie.”
The cast and crew battled unpredictable weather throughout filming. “We were out in the weather, whether we were cold, uncomfortable, getting rained on,” Damon recalled. Then came the moment that made every exhausting day worthwhile.
After watching the film one of his daughters turned to him and quietly said, “Dad, I’m proud of you.”
Damon admitted the words caught him completely off guard. “She’s never said anything like that because we joke around a lot and so at that point, I was like, ‘I’m good.'”
“It was all worth it,” he added.
The actor, who stars as Odysseus in Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s classic poem, also revealed how much his family sacrificed during the lengthy production.
“It’s great because they had to sacrifice a lot too for this,” he said at the film’s London premiere. “It was a very long movie, very grueling shoot.”
As his two oldest daughters begin building lives of their own, Damon says he’s becoming more aware of how quickly family time passes.
“Having two older kids who are out of the nest and knowing how fast these final years go, we’re trying to be mindful of holding onto what we can.”
Sometimes, one heartfelt sentence from your child is worth more than a lifetime of applause.