Matt Damon says Robin Williams and Tom Hanks taught him how to lead a film

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Matt Damon says he learned how to play a lead from working with some pretty big film legends.

"It's really lovely to hear Tom [Holland] talking the way he's talking about me because I was around his age, or just a bit younger, when I got to work with Robin Williams and with Tom Hanks, and with Denzel [Washington], and their example is what shaped the rest of my career," Damon said in an interview with VT, after Holland commented that Damon was their "fearless leader" on set. "So hopefully in 20 years Tom's gonna be here with a young actor sitting next to him going, 'I worked with him!'"

Damon worked with Washington in the 1996 war drama in Courage Under Fire before famously working with Williams in the Academy Award-nominated Good Will Hunting, which catapulted his and Ben Affleck's careers (plus, they both wrote the screenplay). In 1997, he starred alongside Tom Hanks in the epic war thriller Saving Private Ryan. Damon truly became a lead in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on the novel of the same name, in which he played a con man (who has something bad happen to him on a boat, not unlike his character Odysseus in The Odyssey).

The Odyssey is based on Homer's epic of the same name and stars Damon as Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, as he tries to find his way back home after the Trojan War. It's got a runtime of 2 hours and 52 minutes, which is to be expected for a Christopher Nolan movie (though I'm not complaining).

The Odyssey is in theaters now. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming movies in 2026 and beyond, or, check out our list of movie release dates.