How Many Kids Does Matt Damon Have With His Wife Luciana?
Despite his A-lister status with an Oscar and a couple of Golden Globes under his belt, Matt Damon has managed to keep his private life away from the spotlight. He's put a lot of effort into making it happen and has reaped the rewards, unlike some of his peers. "Brad and Angie, there's much more pressure on them than there is on me," Damon told Parade about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2011. "He asked me what my everyday is like. I said, 'Well, I grab the kids from school, and then we go over to the park.' And he was just looking at me, like, 'How can you do that?'"
Perhaps it helped that Damon found love outside Hollywood. In 2003, Damon met Luciana Barroso at a bar in Miami, where he was filming "Stuck on You" and she worked as a bartender. "[He] had started getting recognized [...] and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff, and so he came and hid behind my bar," the Argentina native told Vogue Australia in 2018. Staying true to himself, Damon wed Barroso in a private ceremony at New York City Hall in December 2005, after a short engagement.
Damon avoided exposure by leading a quiet life. "I've been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal. Absent that, they really don't have much interest in you," he told Parade. Even if we don't hear much about it, Damon is a family man through and through.
Matt Damon is a girl dad — and bonus girl dad
Matt Damon jumped into parenthood the moment he tied the knot with Luciana Barroso. When the two met, Barroso was a single mother to four-year-old Alexia. "[T]hat was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter [...] Some guys might have been different, they might think it's complicated, but for him it wasn't," she said in the Vogue Australia interview. Damon took to Alexia straight away and never looked back.
"The only way I can describe it — it sounds stupid, but — at the end of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas,' you know how his heart grows, like, five times its size? Everything is full," he explained. Damon and Barroso went on to have three other children together. They gave Alexia her first sister in June 2006, when they welcomed Isabella. Damon and Barroso expanded the brood two years later, with the birth of Gia in August 2008. Their third daughter, Stella, completed the family in October 2010.
And just like that, the "Good Will Hunting" star ended up being the only guy in a six-person household. "I never expected to be surrounded by girls, but it's great. ...You never know which way life's going to take you," he told Today in 2012. In addition to keeping him on his toes, his daughters also taught him another big life lesson. "I'm learning so much, not the least of which is how much smarter girls are," he quipped.
Matt Damon and Luciana want to raise conscientious daughters
Beyond being a girl dad, Matt Damon loves being a father in general. "My whole life opened up when I became a dad," he told Entertainment Tonight in 2015. And, for Damon, being a good parent includes showing Alexia, Isabella, Gia, and Stella the world beyond their privilege. "It's a hard thing to explain to a kid," he said during a 2008 fundraising event. "And it is also unbelievable the way other kids are forced to live."
Instead of trying to use words, Damon wants to let them see it for themselves. "You can read about devastation every morning — it's on the front page of the newspaper — but when you actually go there and see it, you realize this isn't something you can turn the page on," he added. After becoming a father, Damon — who is an activist and co-founder of different nonprofits — became even more dedicated to improving children's lives.
After visiting villages in India with little to no access to clean water in 2014, Damon put himself in the parents' shoes. "Our daughters in that situation would be off looking for a water source and hauling water for the family and they would have no prospects for a life or a future," he told CNN. He wants his girls to be conscientious of those realities. "I plan to take them on some of the trips that I go on to developing countries," he told The Guardian in 2012.