On the various international sets where “The Odyssey” was shot, leading man Matt Damon developed a routine with Jimmy Gonzales, who plays a warrior on Odysseus’ crew. Whenever a scene called for the characters to evade dangerous forces during their mythical voyage from Troy to Ithaca in director Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster, the two actors raced.Along the southern coast of Iceland, for instance, Gonzales remembered filming a dozen dead sprints on the foggy, dark-sand beach. The air was cold, and his hamstrings felt like they were going to snap. That didn’t stop him and Damon from talking trash as they caught their breath between takes.Hearing their banter, another cast member stepped in.“I’m going to smoke you guys,” said Sean Avery, sporting a long red beard.Connor McDavid is hockey John WickThomas DranceCast as Laodamas, one of Odysseus’ muscular, helmet-clad men, Avery lined up behind Damon and Gonzales for the next take. When it began, he surged forward, blasting past both. Gonzales recalled Damon’s immediate, impressed response.“That,” the movie star observed, “is what a professional athlete can do.”Over his 10-season, 580-game NHL career as an antagonistic winger with the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers and Dallas Stars, Avery compiled more than six times as many penalty minutes (1,533) as he did points (247) and frequently stirred up controversy. Notably, his actions with the Rangers in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs — facing and moving in front of Martin Brodeur to block the New Jersey Devils goalie’s vision — led to an unprecedented mid-series rule change by the league.Since his last NHL game in December 2011, Avery hasn’t left the public eye for long. He participated in a 2014 season of “Dancing with the Stars,” exiting in the ABC show’s second week. He wrote a 2017 memoir, titled “Ice Capades: A Memoir of Fast Living and Tough Hockey,” and co-authored a 2025 hockey romance novel, “Summer Skate,” with Leslie Cohen. Avery’s personal life came under scrutiny in 2022 when his wife, Hilary Rhoda, filed for divorce and was granted a restraining order against him, stating that he had been abusive towards her and their son. Avery says they have since reconciled. (He was not charged with a crime.)Avery is still involved in the hockey sphere. He’s more than willing to offer NHL punditry on podcasts; on an April 2026 episode of “Spittin’ Chiclets,” for example, he described Los Angeles Kings winger Artemi Panarin’s play as “embarrassing” during the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He also posts (occasionally obscenity-laced) breakdowns of league highlights on his Instagram page.But professionally, his post-playing career has been defined by an unlikely passion: acting.Now 46, he has appeared in 11 feature-length movies, including the three most recent from Nolan, one of the most decorated, highest-grossing directors ever. For “Oppenheimer,” which won Best Picture at the 2023 Academy Awards, he shared significant screentime with two generational greats when his character — credited as “Weatherman” — got into a heated argument with those played by Damon and Cillian Murphy.Avery spent around six months filming “The Odyssey,” traveling from his Los Angeles home to Greece, Scotland, Iceland, Morocco and Sicily. He says “guys were banged up” from the physical demands of being on Odysseus’ crew: They hiked up a mountain and through trees wearing armor, took rowing courses and spent days filming on boats to execute Nolan’s vision. It was the most extensive production Avery had experienced — and it only made him hungrier for more work in his new field.“I’m never going to stop,” he says.Avery attends the New York premiere of “The Odyssey” in July 2026. (Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images)An NHL-like rushAvery made his acting debut in “The Rocket” — a 2005 biopic of Hockey Hall of Famer Maurice Richard — while still in the NHL, playing New York Rangers enforcer Bob Dill years before joining the team himself in 2007. But hardly anyone would have pictured him popping up in critically acclaimed films after his hockey career was over, himself included.After a messy exit from a 2014 off-Broadway show, Avery landed a small role in the 2016 film “Patriots Day,” directed by Peter Berg, whom he’d gotten to know as a player. The experience, Avery says, was “the closest feeling I’ve had to playing at Madison Square Garden.” The rush inspired him to further immerse himself in the craft.“It took me five years in New York … of just going to classes and figuring out how to do it,” he says. “Learning how to memorize. Understanding what the whole thing was.”Eventually, Avery felt ready to tap another Hollywood connection. While competing on “Dancing with the Stars,” he had gotten to know producer Valoree Papsidera, whose husband John is Nolan’s longtime casting director. So after several years of post-“Patriots Day” acting lessons, Avery reached out to John and auditioned for a role in Nolan’s 2020 movie “Tenet.” Nolan cast him in a small part, which was credited as Red Soldier 1, then gave him a bit more responsibility in “Oppenheimer,” including the argument with Murphy and Damon. The ex-NHLer — who logged 28 career playoff games, all with the Rangers — called filming that scene “one of the most high-stakes nights of my life.”Along with “Patriots Day,” Avery’s non-Nolan credits include “Amsterdam,” a 2022 David O. Russell film featuring Margot Robbie and Christian Bale, and “Happy Gilmore 2.” In the latter, which stars Adam Sandler, he and Hockey Hall of Famer Chris Chelios were cast as a pair of henchmen who serve as muscle for a mobster.Avery’s growing experience and recent history with Nolan didn’t lead to a smooth audition for “The Odyssey” in early 2025. He showed up wearing a Henley shirt that was too tight — Nolan and Papsidera both affectionately made fun of him for it, he remembers — and then blanked on his lines “to the point where they didn’t even make me do them.” Avery thinks the fact that he’d shared a screen with Murphy and Damon in “Oppenheimer” led to Nolan feeling comfortable trusting him anyway.“I’m sure Chris, in the back of his mind, when I blow an audition like that, goes, ‘Yeah, whatever. I’ve seen Sean in the fire. I’ve thrown him in it before,’” Avery says.Now Avery seems to have established himself as a go-to ensemble member for Nolan.“I think Chris just likes people that show up to work ready to go and have a mindset where they understand that the stakes are high,” Avery said. “So like all great coaches, I guess (directors) kind of identify talent and know who they need in certain situations. Maybe I’ve fallen under that category with Chris.”Avery’s antics against the Devils’ Martin Brodeur during the 2008 playoffs led to the mid-series creation of a new NHL rule. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)‘An incredible movie moment’When Gonzales arrived in Essaouira, Morocco for the start of filming for “The Odyssey,” he first encountered Avery outside a restaurant, smoking cigarettes and incessantly talking into a phone. “What the f— is up with this guy?” he thought.Moments later, Elliot Page, an Academy Award nominee who plays Sinon in “The Odyssey,” yelled out, “Sean, give me back my f—ing phone!” Avery, it turns out, was on a call with his young son, Nash, because he’d left his own cell in a Los Angeles Uber on the way to the airport.“And he comes in and he’s not at all bothered by (losing) it,” Gonzales says. “He thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world.”Over the next six months, Gonzales came to view Avery as someone with “insatiable curiosity,” and they became fast friends. Asked if Avery ever offered any advice about working on a Nolan film, Gonzales replies, “I don’t think he ever had time. He was way too busy busting everybody else’s balls.”For Avery, who also suited up for five minor-league teams during his pro hockey career, not counting a stunted 2022 comeback with the ECHL’s Orlando Solar Bears, “It was as similar to a locker-room environment (as) I’ve ever seen outside of a locker room.”At one point in Scotland, while making a trek of 20-plus minutes along the coastline to the catering tents for lunch, Gonzales raved to Avery about castmate Andrew Howard, with whom Gonzales had just shared a scene. Howard, walking behind them, asked what they were talking about.“Jimmy was just telling me how you’re stealing all his lines,” Avery deadpanned, not missing a beat.The fib set Howard on a rant about how actors shouldn’t view lines as a matter of competition, which in turn made Avery the subject of Gonzales’ ire. With Avery laughing, the two friends bickered until lunch, when Damon sat down next to them. When Gonzales filled him in on the argument, Damon grew serious.“Sean, you’ve got to f—ing make this right,” Gonzales recalls him saying.Avery’s face turned white, and he assured Damon he would.“That’s the only time Damon kind of leaned into me,” Avery says.An adorable tradition: Putting babies in the Stanley CupJoe Smith and Madison EadesDamon is a Boston sports diehard, and Avery says the star knew of him “from my previous life” in the NHL. Avery remembers talking to the lead about former Bruins winger Brad Marchand, who was traded to the Florida Panthers during production.The entire ensemble group became close and loved to joke around with each other. On another occasion, while filming on a boat in the Mediterranean, Nolan sternly told Avery to quiet down as the ex-player talked animatedly to a castmate. As soon as the director walked away, Gonzales says with a laugh, the actors on the boat began heckling Avery “like school kids.”Avery has a few notable moments in Nolan’s final product. He delivers a line in the cyclops scene, and his face is shown prominently when Circe feeds Odysseus’ crew a stew and temporarily turns them into pigs. When on Apollo’s island, Avery’s character frustratedly throws a rock to shoo away a cow. Then, in a final moment of glory, he grabs Damon’s hand and hoists him onto the boat before the rest of the crew drowns.“I save Odysseus,” Avery says. “What an incredible movie moment for me.”“The Odyssey” has been a smash hit and is projected to pass $1 billion in global box office sales. Avery has received a bevy of notes from friends who saw the movie, including plenty from his NHL days. Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan, who played with him in Detroit and New York, messaged him from a theater this week.“Every day it’s somebody new because every day somebody new has seen the movie,” Avery says.The experience has only furthered his acting ambitions. He says he’ll appear in the new CBS show “Einstein,” which is set to premiere in the middle of the 2026-27 television season, and in season four of “The Night Agent” on Netflix. He also recently auditioned for a part in “I Love LA,” a Rachel Sennott HBO comedy about a talent agent and her Los Angeles-based friend group. If he gets the role, Avery says, he “could win a Golden Globe off of” it.“And if they don’t choose me,” Avery says, “they made a mistake.”