Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon at The Odyssey premiere
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Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway’s age gap has sparked another The Odyssey debate

It’s been dubbed the 'most historically accurate thing in the movie’

Daisy Phillipson
7th July 2026, 14:18
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There’s been much talk about The Odyssey’s historical accuracy – Christopher Nolan even addressed the conversation. Now, attention has turned to the age gap between Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway. 

The first reactions are in for Nolan’s latest epic, and it’s looking good, with critics praising the cast and visuals, describing it as a huge cinematic achievement. 

As an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic of the same name, The Odyssey cast is one of the biggest talking points, featuring Matt Damon as Odysseus, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, and Zendaya as Athena. 

Meanwhile, Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, is played by Anne Hathaway, and taking the role of their son Telemachus is Tom Holland. 

Explaining The Odyssey’s Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway age gap

In real life, Hathaway is 43 years old, while Holland is 30 years old, meaning there’s just a 13-year age gap between the actors playing mother and son on screen.

Although Homer doesn’t explicitly say the ages of the characters in his work, scholars have estimated their ages based on various evidence, suggesting that Penelope is between 35 and 40, while Telemachus is just over 20. 

As for real life, in ancient Greece, women were often married by the age of 14 or 16, while men typically married around the age of 30. 

It’s for this reason that when discussing the actors’ age gap, commenters are joking that it’s actually a “historically accurate” detail. 

Over on X, one wrote, “Saw a post of someone saying it is silly that Anne Hathaway is playing Tom Holland’s mom in the new Nolan film, because she’s only 13 years older than him.

“Amusingly, this is a historical thing Nolan got right by accident, as Damon is 12 years older than her, and wed at 24/12 is only a little young for Ancient Greece. (For both).”

Another said it “actually works age wise because Ancient Greece.”

But the observation has also become part of the wider debate surrounding The Odyssey’s casting, with viewers continuing to argue over which aspects of Nolan’s adaptation should remain faithful to history and which can be reimagined.

One user said it was the “only historically accurate thing in the movie,” while another described it as the “most” accurate. 

Nolan himself defended taking creative liberties with The Odyssey, describing adapting Homer’s work as challenging. 

Speaking to Reuters, he said, “Once I sort of figured out that, for me, when ​you look at the text of the poem, it (has) really incredible payoffs. But the set-ups that a movie requires ⁠aren’t there in an epic poem because his audience is familiar with the elements. 

“So when Odysseus encounters Argos near the end of the ​poem, you know, his faithful hunting dog… his audience knows it’s coming. For us, we have to set that up. 

“Once I sort of started ​to figure out that, okay, you have to take some liberties with it, you’ve got to move some things around in order to try and get across the impression that you had from experiencing the poem, you know, that’s when things started to gain momentum.”

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Featured image credit: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock