Matt Damon Stopped Using the 'F-Slur for a Homosexual' Recently After Lesson from Daughter
Matt Damon has decided to drop a certain word from his personal vocabulary.
In new interview with the UK Sunday Times for his film Stillwater, the 50-year-old actor said he was recently given a lesson by one of his daughters about why using "the 'f-slur for a homosexual' " is "dangerous."
"The word that my daughter calls the 'f-slur for a homosexual' was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application," Damon told the outlet in a story published Sunday. "I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, 'Come on, that's a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!' "
According to the Academy Award winner, his daughter "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," Damon added. He didn't disclose which daughter he had the conversation with; the star shares daughters Stella, 10, Gia, 12, Isabella, 15, and Alexia, 22, with wife Luciana Barroso.
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Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images Matt Damon
Damon has previously apologized for controversial comments he made about sexual harassment in Hollywood, after suggesting that claims should be viewed differently from allegations of sexual assault.
"There's a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?" Damon said in a December 2017 interview with ABC News' Popcorn with Peter Travers. "Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated, without question, but they shouldn't be conflated, right?"
The following month, Damon walked back his words and said on the Today show, "I really wish I'd listened a lot more before I weighed in on this. ... Ultimately, what it is for me is that I don't want to further anybody's pain with anything that I do or say, so for that I'm really sorry."
He continued, "And Time's Up — a lot of those women are my dear friends and I love them and respect them and support what they're doing and want to be a part of that change and want to go along for the ride, but I should get in the backseat and close my mouth for a while."
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The actor again addressed the incident in his recent interview with the Times, when asked about his previous quotes surrounding Harvey Weinstein. "As the father of four daughters, this is the kind of sexual predation that keeps me up at night," Damon said.
On why many were upset that he would put the seriousness of the allegations against Weinstein, 69, in the context of fatherhood, he told the Times, "I understand. It's a fair point. Anybody should be offended by that behavior."
"I just think that there's a tendency now ... Twenty years ago, the best way I can put it is that the journalist listened to the music more than the lyrics [of an interview]," Damon said. "Now your lyrics are getting parsed, to pull them out of context and get the best headline possible. Everyone needs clicks."
"Before, it didn't really matter what I said, because it didn't make the news. But maybe this shift is a good thing," he added. "So I shut the f--- up more."
