Matt Damon is one of the most critically-acclaimed actors of the past 25 years. After his breakout as the star of Good Will Hunting, which he also wrote and won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Matt has gone on to appear in plenty of beloved movies and critically-acclaimed films, like The Martian, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Departed.
In 2003, Matt met Luciana Barroso, and the couple got married two years later. Almost 20 years after tying the knot, they’re still going strong, and they’re parents to three daughters: Isabella, 16, Gia, 14, and Stella, 12. Matt is also a stepdad to Luciana’s daughter Alexia Barroso, 24, from her previous marriage. It’s clear that he’s a doting father to all of his girls. Recently, Matt’s three daughters all came to support him at the premiere of his upcoming film Air in March 2023. Find out more about all of Matt’s daughters here.
Before marrying Matt, Luciana was married to Arbello Barroso, and they had a daughter Alexia in 1999. When the Good Will Hunting star and Luciana got married, he became a stepfather to Alexia, and it’s clear that he thinks of her as one of his own. Matt revealed that when his stepdaughter was 10, he brought her to her first concert, which was none other than Prince, who they also met after the show, in a 2016 interview on The Tonight Show. He joked that it would likely “ruin” future concerts for her, since it was such an epic first experience. Alexia had even made a cameo in his 2011 film We Bought A Zoo, per IMDb. When Alexia was a young adult, Matt had admitted that she was planning to move out soon in an August 2021 interview with RadioTimes. “Our almost 20-year-old will soon be out of the nest,” he said, per DailyMail.
Luciana opened up about how when she met Matt she was a single mom, and she was prioritizing her child, in a May 2018 interview with Vogue Australia. “He said: ‘I love that you’re a mum and that’s your priority’. Some guys might have been different, they might think it’s complicated, but for him it wasn’t. When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that’s just the person that you have a connection with, all the other stuff— the movie-star part—wasn’t really a factor,” she said.
Shortly after tying the knot in 2005, Matt and Luciana welcomed their eldest daughter together Isabella in 2006. The actor admitted that his oldest actually tends to avoid his most popular movies, because she wants to be able to roast him. “She doesn’t want to see any movies that I’m in that she thinks might be good, he said in a July 2021 interview with CBS Sunday Morning. “She just likes to give me s**t… She keeps my feet firmly on the ground.”
Besides keeping him humble about his movies, Matt has also admitted that Isabella has helped him learn and grow as a person. He admitted to using the f-slur in a joke, and his daughter explained to him how using the term was harmful and offensive to the LGBTQ+ community. “I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter,” he said in a 2021 interview with The Sunday Times. “She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”
After some backlash to him sharing the story, Matt further explained that he had never directed the slur at anyone and gave more context in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “I do not use slurs of any kind. I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself ‘one of the good guys’. And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst. To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” he said.
Luciana gave birth to her and Matt’s second child together Gia in August 2008. While Matt occasionally speaks about his daughters in interviews and they sometimes join him at red-carpet events, the pair do mostly keep their children out of the spotlight. Shortly before Gia was born, Matt did joke about being the only male member of his family in an interview with USA Today. “I’m so outnumbered down here, it’s crazy,” he said. Matt had also revealed that both Gia and Alexia had had COVID in a September 2021 GQ profile.
Matt and Luciana’s youngest daughter Stella was born in 2010. Like her older sisters, the couple have mostly kept her life private. Luciana did open up about what values she and Matt have been trying to raise their daughters with in the aforementioned Vogue Australia interview. “The thing for us has always been that just we try really hard to constantly talk about self-esteem and compassion, and hope that will carry on,” she said. “I just hope that they know how respect themselves and respect others and to not hold back and do what they want to do, but always have in mind the affect on another human being. I want them to feel like they can do anything and everything they want to do, to just have to go for it and try and don’t let anything stand in their way but not at the cost of somebody else.”
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