Matt Damon Reveals Daughter Contracted Coronavirus

Matt Damon is opening up about the coronavirus’ impact on his family as they quarantine in the small Irish town of Dalkey. The actor, who was in the middle of shooting a movie in Ireland when the pandemic hit, appeared on local radio show SPIN 1038 Fully Charged to talk about the circumstances surrounding his family’s quarantine.

“I’m in the middle of a movie that I shot the first half in France and we were moving to Ireland and kind of right when we arrived in Ireland, the movie was shut down,” Damon explained of how he ended up abroad for lockdown. He also revealed that wife Luciana Barroso’s 21-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, whom he considers his own daughter, was diagnosed with the coronavirus early in its U.S. spread.

“Our oldest daughter’s in college. Obviously that’s been shut down, but she’s in New York City. She had COVID really early on along with her roommates and got through it fine,” Damon explained of her health journey. “So I shouldn’t say our whole family’s together. Of our four kids we’ve got the three younger ones and our oldest one, we’ll reunite with her at the end of the month. But everybody’s OK.”

Damon and Barroso’s three younger children — Isabella, 13, Gia, 11, and 9-year-old Stella — are quarantining with their them. Being caught in the small Irish town is the best the family could hope for, Damon admitted. “It’s incredible. It’s one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been,” he explained. “Obviously what’s going on in the world is horrible, but for my family, it timed out. I’m with my whole family, I’ve got my kids, and we had teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks, so we’ve got what nobody else has, which is actual live human beings teaching our kids. All their friends, the schools are all shut down back home and the kids are doing remote learning, so we feel guilty. We’ve got this incredible set up in this place, which is gorgeous.”

Damon also made a point about preparedness and the necessity of relying on science in these difficult times, referencing his role in Contagion, a 2011 film centered around a mass virus outbreak. “Anybody who says you couldn’t have predicted this, just look at Contagion. Ten years ago we made a movie just by talking to experts,” Damon said.