Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey has sparked plenty of conversation among movie fans, and one familiar face in the cast has a link to a beloved Christmas classic.
Released in 2000, How the Grinch Stole Christmas remains a festive favorite for many viewers and is still widely seen as one of the standout holiday films of its era.
The movie centers on the Grinch, whose dislike of Christmas is gradually challenged by the warmth and kindness around him.
Although its initial reception was divided, the film has built a lasting reputation over the years and now holds a firm place in many seasonal watchlists.
One of its stars, Bill Irwin, played Lou Lou, the father of Cindy Lou, and he has now taken on a very different role in Nolan’s latest epic.
For The Odyssey, Irwin helped bring the film’s fearsome Cyclops, Polyphemus, to life through a mix of physical performance, prosthetics and visual effects.
The movie, which opened in theaters on July 17, 2026, has already drawn strong reactions from audiences and sparked discussion about Nolan’s unusually grounded approach to Homer’s mythic material.
In the production notes for The Odyssey, Nolan said that one of the toughest parts of making the film was figuring out how to convincingly present such a legendary and intimidating figure on screen.
Nolan stated: “How can we take something that seems so fantastic and make you believe in it? The advantage I had going into The Odyssey was that I now have a lot of experience with different types of techniques of how to put things on film, whether you’re talking about the use of visual effects, practical effects, stunts, real locations, building sets, and many more.
“We needed to use all of it for The Odyssey, and in particular, for the Cyclops. Every trick in the book.”
In the finished film, the Cyclops is realized through a blend of Irwin’s physical acting and additional visual effects work, with the character designed to feel more eerie and human than purely monstrous.
Viewers have been quick to praise his performance, with one person penning on X: “Bill Irwin was fantastic as the cyclops.”
Irwin and Nolan are already familiar collaborators, having previously worked together on the 2014 sci-fi film Interstellar.
Speaking of Irwin’s performance as the cyclops in The Odyssey, Nolan told reporter Jake Hamilton: “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.