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Matt Damon Loves Being a Girl Dad – Get to Know His Daughters
Matt Damon‘s family made a rare public appearance at the Los Angeles premiere of his film “Air” on March 27. Ahead of the movie’s April 5 release, the actor was joined by wife Luciana Barroso and their three daughters, Isabella, Gia, and Stella Damon. Although their oldest daughter, Alexia Barroso (whom Luciana welcomed in a previous marriage), wasn’t with them, she has publicly supported the actor in the past by attending his other movie premieres.
Matt may be private when it comes to his personal life, but we do know a few details about his family, like the fact that Matt met his wife while filming 2003’s “Stuck on You.” At the time, Luciana was working at a bar in Miami. Matt and Luciana fell in love and got married in 2005. He and Luciana then went on to expand their family in the years to come.
In a December 2012 interview with Today, Matt said he “never expected to be surrounded by girls” but said fatherhood has been “great.” In fact, he compared the experience to the ending scene of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” “When his heart grows five sizes, that’s what [becoming a father] felt like,” he explained. “It was like everything expanded in a way that I didn’t know was possible. And it was instant.”
Learn more about Matt’s kids ahead.
Related: Matt Damon’s Teenage Daughter Trolls Him by Only Watching His Bad Movies
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Alexia Barroso
Luciana welcomed Alexia with her previous husband, Arbello Barroso, in Argentina in 1999. In a May 2018 interview with Vogue Australia, Luciana said that after she and Matt hit things off at a bar in Miami, one of the things that drew him to her was his understanding of her being a mother and putting Alexia first. “We definitely had a connection right away,” she said. “It was so easy to talk to each other. We were very comfortable [with each other], and by the end of the night, he invited me to go out with his friends. But I was like, ‘I can’t, I have a 4-year-old daughter, I’m not going anywhere.'”
She continued, “That was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter. He said, ‘I love that you’re a mom and that’s your priority.’ Some guys might have been different, they might think it’s complicated, but for him it wasn’t.”
Matt became Alexia’s stepfather in 2005 after he and Luciana tied the knot. In 2011, Alexia appeared in Matt’s movie “We Bought A Zoo.” In a September 2015 interview with USA Today, the actor also revealed he taught Alexia how to drive. “My oldest daughter just got her license yesterday,” he raved at the time. “She would drive last year just to school every morning. We’d get in the car and drive.”
According to WUSA9, Matt was spotted accompanying Alexia on a tour of American University in 2017 during her senior year of high school. While not much else is known about her, she previously supported her stepdad by attending the New York premiere of his film “Stillwater” in 2021.
Isabella Damon
Luciana gave birth to her and Matt’s first child together in June 2006. Their daughter, Isabella, was born in Miami, FL. In August 2007, Matt told People that his family would travel with him on location for work. Since Isabella was just a year old when Matt was filming “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the star said he would have trouble sleeping whenever he would go visit his family at their hotel. “If I’m in my trailer, I try to sleep because my daughter doesn’t let me sleep in the hotel,” he said. “[Director] Paul Greengrass said about halfway through filming it was really helping the characterization of Bourne that I wasn’t sleeping at all because I looked really haggard and I was in some kind of existential pain. And it was in fact just lack of sleep.”
Now, years later, Isabella continues to keep her dad on his toes. In a July 2021 interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Matt revealed Isabella keeps him humble by being his ultimate movie critic. “[Isabella] doesn’t want to see any movies that I’m in that she thinks might be good. She just likes to give me sh*t,” Matt said. “My daughter said, ‘Hey remember that movie you did, ‘The Wall?’ I said, ‘It was called ‘The Great Wall.‘ She goes, ‘Dad, there was nothing great about that movie!’ She keeps my feet firmly on the ground.”
He joked about the incident again while appearing on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” on April 6. “My 16-year-old likes to give me a hard time. She is very clear about not wanting to see anything that I’m in if she thinks it might be good,” the star said about Isabella. “If I get bad reviews in something, that’s the one she wants to see.”
Gia Damon
In August 2008, Matt and Luciana welcomed their second daughter together, Gia Zavala, in Miami. Just weeks before Gia’s arrival, Matt told USA Today that he would be “taking the rest of the year off” in order to spend quality time with his family. He also joked about being in a household full of girls. “I’m so outnumbered down here, it’s crazy,” he said.
In that same interview, Matt revealed becoming a father has inspired him to get involved with charity work, specifically the One X One Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of children worldwide. “It’s not like before I was a father I was like, ‘The hell with those kids.’ But something does shift when you have a child of your own,” he said. “It’s hard not to look at every child as somehow connected to you.”
Stella Damon
Matt and Luciana welcomed their youngest daughter, Stella, in New York City in October 2010. Shortly after her birth, Matt told Entertainment Weekly that his life has only become busier since becoming a father of four girls. “We came home from the hospital the other night, and we were up with the baby and the alarm went off. And I realized, ‘Oh, sh*t, I’ve got to take the other kids to school,'” he recalled in November 2010. “Their lives don’t stop because we had a baby. So it’s a little relentless, but I mean that in a good way.”
Despite the fact that he’s always filming, Matt told KIIS FM in July 2016 (via the Daily Mail) that he always makes sure to spend quality time with his family. “We try to not be apart for two weeks. We have this two-week rule, but three weeks has been the longest we have ever been apart,” he said, adding that if a project is “too disruptive” to his schedule, he’ll pass on the opportunity entirely.
Clearly, family takes priority for the actor.