You Probably Didn't Realise You'd Seen The Odyssey's Cyclops In A Festive Family Fave

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/christopher-nolan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Christopher Nolan’s new movie https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/the-odyssey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Odyssey features a plethora of stand-out scenes, including the moment when https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/matt-damon/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Matt Damon’s hero Odysseus comes face-to-face with a cyclops for the first time.

While promoting his film, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-odyssey-making-of-behind-scenes_uk_6a59f4bee4b042a7aac764cd">Nolan has opened up about how he wanted to create this sequence with as little CGI as possible, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-christopher-nolan-created-cyclops-odyssey_uk_6a5dfef5e4b0ab756517c9f3">instead relying on a mix of puppetry and animatronic technology.

To do this, he reunited with https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0410347/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bill Irwin, the actor, puppeteer and clown (yes, really!) with whom he previously collaborated on his sci-fi epic Interstellar.

As well as operating much of the puppeteering that went into creating The Odyssey’s cyclops, he also lent his voice to the 60-foot creation.

But what you might not realise is just how familiar with Bill’s work you already are.

As well as voicing and puppeteering the robot TARS in Interstellar, he also played Cindy Lou’s dad Lou Lou in https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-grinch-facts-trivia-never-knew_uk_67628227e4b0d69068d272ed?aqj">the festive classic The Grinch.

His other big film credits include Rachel Getting Married (led by The Odyssey’s own https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/anne-hathaway/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Anne Hathaway), Ricki And The Flash and the Oscar-nominated Rustin, while his TV work has seen him play Nate Haskell in CSI, Dr. Peter Lindstrom in Law & Order: SVU, multiple whimsical characters in Sesame Street and Su’Kal in the Star Trek spin-off Discovery.

More recently, he lent his voice to the Netflix docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries alongside appearing in the hit series https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/the-beast-in-me/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Beast In Me and https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0410347/mediaviewer/rm728098561/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Dropout.

Praising his frequent collaborator’s performance in The Odyssey, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-christopher-nolan-created-cyclops-odyssey_uk_6a5dfef5e4b0ab756517c9f3">Nolan said recently: “I learned from my friend Guillermo Del Toro that a monster is never just a monster – and that’s something he’s brought to his own work in a major way.

“It’s really about finding the individual behind that, and, in that way, presenting a more real and a more threatening [character].

The cyclops is a real individual, it’s a real character that Bill’s been able to create with everybody else involved in the film.”

The Odyssey is in cinemas now.