Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey wrangles together some of Hollywood’s biggest heavy hitters. Matt Damon brought his A-game as Odysseus, and fans have rightly acknowledged the incredible performances of other A-listers like Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, and Anne Hathaway. But anyone who walked out of the theater thinking only about the big guns’ performances slept on the fact that some of the best character work in this movie was done by supporting actors who are not as universally known.
These five actors are now the ones fans chat excitedly about. One even turned down the opportunity at first, but somehow ended up in the movie anyway. Another one became a serious Oscar frontrunner for playing a blind guy who can’t even see the camera pointed at him. The real difference this time is that they showed what they’re capable of in a blockbuster.
5. Logan Marshall-Green as Melanthius
Logan Marshall-Green’s journey to portraying a character in The Odyssey wasn’t exactly plain sailing. He did his audition tape, got a call back from Nolan, but then decided to turn it down because of the LA fires. He figured that’s it. Doors closed. But fate clearly had other ideas. Cosmo Jarvis, who eventually landed the role, decided to drop out due to scheduling conflicts, and Nolan came calling again.
Marshall-Green plays Melanthius, the two-faced goat herder who spends pretty much the whole movie cozying up to Odysseus’ family during the day and secretly arming the suitors for the final brawl at night. Fans of movies like Upgrade, Prometheus, and The Invitation may not have been surprised by his performance because they’ve seen him pull off understated intensity in those movies. The Odyssey throws in a fun twist where he’s the twin brother of Mia Goth’s equally shady Melantho, spinning some interesting family dynamics into the mix. While both shine as supporting stars, Marshall-Green steals the limelight with a frustrating sleaziness that makes you wish for his downfall.
4. Corey Hawkins as Polybus
Watching a very likable actor portraying a total creep can leave a very weird feeling. That weird feeling is what most viewers experienced when they watched Corey Hawkins play Polybus, one of the suitors circling Ithaca’s throne like vultures. He spends most of his screen time bullying Telemachus and just being generally insufferable.
It’s jarring because this is the same guy who plays Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton and the soft-hearted Benny in In The Heights. Fans are split down the middle on his performance. Some say his niceness keeps leaking through, so he’s not threatening enough. Others think that’s exactly what makes him interesting to watch: a regular guy who got corrupted by greed. Either way, the fact that people argue about it shows that Nolan knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to cast against type.
3. Himesh Patel as Eurylochus
Fans of British soap opera shows know exactly who Himesh Patel is. He spent nearly a decade on EastEnders playing Tamwar Masood. American audiences only caught on to how good an actor he is when he sang his way into their hearts in Yesterday in 2019. He then followed up sharing the screen with Leonardo DiCaprio in Don’t Look Up.
In The Odyssey, he plays Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command and the official voice of reason that no one listens to. His back-and-forths with Damon’s Odysseus carry some of the film’s best tension. Apart from his appearance in Yesterday, Patel has also featured in productions like Tenet, Greedy People, and Station Eleven. This is easily the biggest stage he’s had yet, and he absolutely holds his own against Damon in every scene.
2. John Leguizamo as Eumaeus
John Leguizamo has been in this business for more than four decades. He’s featured prominently in movies like Carlito’s Way, Moulin Rouge!, and Romeo + Juliet and has enough voice work to fill a Disney server farm. But despite his best efforts, he’s never gotten an Oscar nod. Not once. Well, that might finally change after partnering with Oscar-magnet Christopher Nolan.
He plays Eumaeus, Odysseus’s blind swineherd who stays endlessly loyal to the family in the king’s absence. Nolan actually wrote the blindness into this version, and Leguizamo wore opaque contact lenses that essentially left him blind on the set for hours at a time. That’s a rough way to shoot a movie, but his performance shows it was well worth the trouble. His scenes with Telemachus have this quiet, deeply human warmth that doesn’t feel manufactured for the camera. Critics are already buzzing about the fact that this is the role that may finally land him an Oscar.
1. Samantha Morton as Circe
Ten minutes. That’s all it took for Samantha Morton to seriously imprint her genius into The Odyssey. Seems incredible, but fans of The Whale (where she spent a similar amount of time playing Mary) know that’s like a normal working day for Morton. In Nolan’s epic, she plays Circe, the enchantress of Aeaea who turns Odysseus’s starving crew into pigs.
The terrifying beauty of that scene is that she made sure it played less like a floaty magic moment, and more like an A24-style horror movie that stumbled into an epic. She reportedly got a standing ovation from the cast and crew, something that hadn’t happened since Heath Ledger‘s Joker in The Dark Knight. Nolan himself called her work the “fulcrum” the entire film rests on. That’s a huge compliment from a guy who doesn’t hand those out lightly. Morton has been nominated for two Oscars before, but this might be the one that finally gets her over the line.
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