John Leguizamo sacrificed his vision for long shoot days while filming Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey.
The 66-year-old actor detailed what it was like to portray the blind servant Eumaeus in the movie, which forced him to wear special contact lenses that obstructed his eyesight.
He recalled ‘not being able to see for 12 to 14 hours a day’ and said, ‘I couldn’t see my phone, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t call [anyone]’ in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
Leguizamo said he even needed assistance doing ordinary things like eating and relieving himself.
‘I had to be taken to the bathroom, I had to be brought back. I had to be taken to eat. And then when I was alone, I just had to be inside my head because that’s all I had,’ he shared.
He then joked, ‘Too much time with my own thoughts… it’s a dangerous thing.’
John Leguizamo sacrificed his vision for long shoot days while filming Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey; pictured July 14
The 66-year-old actor detailed what it was like to portray the blind servant Eumaeus in the movie, which forced him to wear special contact lenses that obstructed his eyesight
Earlier this month, the star told People magazine his approach to acting is ‘kind of method,’ a performance style in which actors embody their characters’ experience rather than simulate it.
He explained, ‘I was having a fever dream as my character, Eumaeus, and losing it because I’m kind of method, and [Nolan] saw that I was freezing because we’re dressed in mini skirts and it was freezing in February.’
Leguizamo said the sympathetic director ‘took off his coat and put it on me.’
It comes amid the revelation that Nolan forced his cast to adhere to strict guidelines during production.
Anne Hathaway said on Royal Court that the 55-year-old director did not allow anyone to wear UGG boots, use cell phones or even sit in chairs, in order to ‘create a bubble of alternate reality.’
Nolan is also said to have prohibited smoking and water bottles, with Robert Pattinson sharing that he made the cast trek 45 minutes to base camp while wearing sandals.
The renowned filmmaker appeared on CBS Mornings on Monday, and shared the reasoning behind his intensity.
‘The funny thing is you can be on set where you’ve got, you know, a guy holding a microphone. You’ve got a giant camera, you’ve got crew everywhere, but something like [UGGs] can actually weirdly take you out of the reality,’ he said.
He recalled ‘not being able to see for 12 to 14 hours a day’ and said, ‘I couldn’t see my phone, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t call [anyone]’; pictured July 8
Nolan (L) did not allow anyone to wear UGG boots, use cell phones or even sit in chairs, in order to ‘create a bubble of alternate reality’ on The Odyssey set
He continued: ‘And for me, I think that’s always been something where, you know, it’s like if someone’s eating a bag of chips off camera or something, you know, there are certain things that just remind you.
‘You want to stay in the moment. You’re in the real world as opposed to the world we’re trying to create for the actors. I want to stay in the moment.’
And Nolan corroborated Pattinson’s claim about hiking up a mountain.
‘When [Pattinson] started on the film, we were shooting at the top of a mountain a thousand feet in the air and we hadn’t been able to get any kind of road built up or anything,’ he explained.
‘But yeah, we’re starting with this tremendous hike and [it] absolutely exhausted you [before starting] your day’s work.’
The Odyssey was filmed across six countries and used over 2 million feet of IMAX 70mm film, culminating in a three-hour movie.
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