Matt Damon's Daughters Have Grown Up To Be Stunning
Matt Damon is a proud girl dad. He and his wife, Luciana Barroso, have four daughters – Alexia Barroso from Luciana's previous relationship and Isabella, Gia, and Stella Damon — and he's loving it. "I never expected to be surrounded by girls, but it's great," he told Today in 2012, quipping, "I'm learning so much, not the least of which is how much smarter girls are."
Indeed, he's totally committed to his family, getting his girls' names tattooed on his arm and never spending more than three weeks away from them. "Every decision to make a movie is really up to the family," he told the Kyle & Jackie O Show (via Mail Online). "If it's going to be too disruptive, I just can't do it." And so, his daughters have accompanied him on shoots around the world and have also made the occasional red-carpet appearance, like at the Paris premiere of "Oppenheimer" in 2023. However, the actor is adamant about keeping them out of the spotlight. As he told Fatherly in 2021, he and his wife are working to give them a normal upbringing. "They're growing up with so much more s**t than we have," he mused. "I do feel like travel does mitigate that." Like when he took Isabella to the Philippines with nonprofit water.org. "I think it's about getting them out of their own experience and into the world," he shared. Despite the secrecy, here's everything we do know about Matt Damon's daughters.
Alexia Barroso played a key role in her parents' relationship future
Matt Damon's meet-cute with wife Luciana Barroso reads like a rom-com. The actor was shooting 2003's "Stuck On You" in Miami, Florida, when, one night, he and the crew hit up a bar in South Beach. Barroso was employed as a bartender, and when fans began swarming Damon for photos and autographs, he hid behind her bar. Recalling the evening to Vogue, she shared, "He says, 'Oh I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.'" Rather than being starstruck, she didn't totally appreciate his appearance at her workspace. "I put him to work with me," she laughed. "I said, 'You know, if you're going to be back here, you can't just be standing there!'" Damon obliged and began mixing drinks alongside her. "It turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!" she mused.
Before that, though, there was one important test he had to ace. Barroso was a single mom to then-four-year-old daughter Alexia Barroso, so when Damon invited her to keep partying, she declined. "He said, 'I love that you're a mom and that's your priority,'" Barroso told the mag. "Some guys might have been different, they might think it's complicated, but for him it wasn't." Indeed, Damon told Hello! Canada (via People), "It was just the way it was, and I was happy for that." Since then, he's embraced the role of stepdad, teaching Alexia to drive and even giving her a cameo in 2009's "We Bought a Zoo."
Isabella Damon grew up on a film set
Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso tied the knot in 2005 and welcomed their first daughter together, Isabella Damon, in June 2006. Not long after, the actor began shooting "The Bourne Ultimatum" in Europe, and his baby girl was never far away. As he told People, his family would hang out at the hotel while he was off shooting, which turned out to be the only time he could recharge his batteries. "If I'm in my trailer, I try to sleep because my daughter doesn't let me sleep in the hotel," he said. In the end, though, that made him a better actor, at least according to the flick's 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," he quipped.
Even so, little Isabella traveled with Dad to every single "Bourne" location. Days before her first birthday, Matt told a British outlet, according to Hello! "She has 11 stamps in her passport — she has more stamps than I did when I was 30," including from Germany, England, France, Morocco, Spain, and Latvia. She also joined her parents at the Cannes Film Festival and reportedly visited George Clooney in Italy. Talk about a mini jet setter!
Isabella Damon is her dad's harshest critic
Matt Damon may be an Oscar winner who's starred in some blockbuster films, but his daughter Isabella Damon is not impressed by his body of work. As the actor told "CBS Sunday Morning" in 2021, the then-15-year-old absolutely refused to watch "Good Will Hunting" because "she doesn't want to see any movies that I'm in that she thinks might be good." Why? "She just like to give me s**t," he laughed. Sharing more details with E!, Matt revealed that Isabella will only watch a film he's in if it flopped. "She's looking for ammunition all the time," he said, quickly adding that it's all love. "She's like one of the funniest people I've ever met," he mused. "She's really cool."
Fast forward to 2023: Isabella, a few years older, is still sticking to her modus operandi. Stopping by "Late Night With Seth Meyers," Matt admitted, "If I get bad reviews in something, that's the [movie] she wants to see." He also shared a particularly brutal burn delivered by his daughter about a film he admitted wasn't his best, "The Great Wall." The actor recalled overhearing his daughter telling a friend about it and repeatedly calling it "The Wall." When he finally corrected her, saying it was called "The Great Wall," she fired back, "Dad, there is nothing great about that movie." Ouch!
Gia Damon met Nelson Mandela as a toddler
In August 2008, Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso welcomed their daughter, Gia Damon, prompting the actor to take a hiatus. "[I'm] taking the rest of the year off, and I'm just hanging out with my family," he told USA Today. With a hint of humor, he added, "I'm so outnumbered down here, it's crazy." Gia's birth also coincided with the launch of his latest charitable project: bringing Canada's One X One Foundation to the States. "It's about helping kids," Matt said, adding, "Something does shift when you have a child of your own — it's hard not to look at every child as somehow connected to you."
Gia's tie to good causes continued in 2010 when she accompanied her dad to the set of "Invictus" in Cape Town, South Africa. That's where she and her sister had the chance to meet Nelson Mandela. "Lucy and I didn't even talk to him, we just let him hang out with the kids," Matt told David Letterman, according to People. "He bounced them on his knee [and] Isabella and Gia couldn't take their eyes off him," he recalled. "They just were looking at each other, completely locked on each other the entire time."
It wasn't the first time a young Gia accompanied her dad to work. That same year, she visited the "True Grit" shoot, with Matt telling People, "They were interested in seeing the horses, so we got some pictures of them with the horses."
Stella Damon's arrival turned the Damon household upside down
The Damon household grew for a third and final time in 2010 when Luciana Barroso gave birth to Stella Damon. It happened that October, just as the actor was busy promoting two films, "Hereafter" and "True Grit." As he joked with Entertainment Weekly, balancing a busy career with such a big brood wasn't always smooth sailing. "I've learned that if you decide not to sleep, you pick up all these extra hours in the day," he quipped. Indeed, it seemed that Stella had officially pushed her parents over the edge. "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, s**t, I've got to take the other kids to school!'" he recalled. "Their lives don't stop because we had a baby, so it's a little relentless."
He shared a similar sentiment with Hello! Canada, admitting (via People), "It's been pretty crazy." Not only was Stella born a few weeks early, but she also forced her parents to completely reshuffle their routines. "It's our fourth, so we've done it before, but it's a whole new dynamic," the actor said. "After a week you go, 'Wait a minute! We have to figure out a plan here.' The girls all require different things." Even so, he was adamant he wouldn't change a thing. "I can't imagine my life having not gone down that road," he enthused.
Alexia Barroso spent the start of the COVID-19 pandemic without her family
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit in early 2020, Matt Damon was in France shooting "The Last Duel." His wife, Luciana Barroso, and their three youngest daughters were there, too. Meanwhile, their eldest, Alexia Barroso, was off at university in New York. When lockdowns began happening, the Damon clan left France for Ireland and decided to shelter in the small town of Dalkey. Speaking with GQ in 2021, the actor recalled, "We got really lucky – we had about as good a lockdown as we could have ever hoped." They didn't get sick, and because he wasn't working, he got to focus on his family full-time. "It was very simple," he mused. "That part of it was eye-opening, going forward, in terms of how I'd like to spend my days."
The only thing missing was his stepdaughter, Alexia, who actually caught COVID-19 in March 2020, along with her roommates. Fortunately, she had no complications, but she didn't get to reunite with her family until the end of May 2020 when the Damons returned to the U.S. Once they were back together, things began to normalize, but the family had another brush with the virus in September 2021 when then-12-year-old Gia was infected. As Damon told GQ, they were lucky yet again, as she only had a low fever and was simply quarantined in her bedroom.
All the times Matt Damon's daughters landed him in the news
Matt Damon's daughters stay far away from the spotlight, but they've still managed to land their dad in the news — for both good and bad reasons. In 2021, for example, Matt took Isabella, Gia, and Stella Damon to see Harry Styles in concert at Madison Square Garden, and, as he told People, he "knew every word to every song." The media had a field day with that revelation, but he wasn't ashamed of liking the same music as his girls. "[Fine Line] dropped, or at least I became aware of it, in that first lockdown, so we had that on repeat," he explained.
On a more somber note, the actor also made headlines in 2021 after he revealed that a joke he made using the derogatory "f-slur" got him reprimanded by one of his girls. As he told The Times, he made a crack, which actually caused one of his daughters to leave the table. "I said, 'Come on, that's a joke! I say it in the movie 'Stuck on You!'" he recalled. Even so, she wasn't impressed. "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!'" That anecdote soon caused major backlash and prompted Matt to issue a public statement, telling Variety, "I have never called anyone 'f****t' in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening."