Matt Damon *Really* Doesn't Like to Spoil His Kids
Matt Damon is an internationally known actor and a household name for many of us, but to four young women he has an even more important role: Dad. Damon and his wife, Luciana Barroso, are parents to four daughters.
Damon has been open about the complexities of navigating parenthood in the spotlight, and how important it is to both him and his wife to keep their kids grounded.
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Damon spoke at length about the values that are the bedrock of his family. "One of the reasons we live in New York is because, without having to explain things to the girls, they can walk around the streets and just by looking around them see that the world is composed of all different people from different walks of life, different languages and different socio-economic backgrounds," he said.
"They pick it up through osmosis. Eventually I plan to take them on some of the trips that I go on to developing countries. That's what my mother did with me when I was a teenager."
Does Matt Damon have children?
Yes! Matt Damon is a dad to four kids: Alexia (shown second from left in the image above), Isabella (second from right), Gia (not shown) and Stella (center).
Related: Meet Luciana Barroso, the Bartender Who Stole Matt Damon's Heart
Who is the mother of Matt Damon's kids?
Matt Damon's wife, Luciana Barroso, is the mother of all four of his children, including their oldest, Alexia, who is Barroso's daughter from a previous relationship. The two have been married since 2005.
During a 2003 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Damon detailed the night he and Barroso met. "I literally saw her across a crowded room," he said. "Eight years and four kids later, that's my life. I don't know how else our paths would've crossed if that didn't happen."
In 2018, Barroso told Vogue Australia that there was a little more to the night than just that. As she revealed, "Matt's story is that he saw me across the room and there was a light on me. And I'm like, 'Yeah, it was a nightclub—there were lights everywhere!'"
Barroso added, "He had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff. So he came and hid behind the bar … [wanting to] just hang out back there and have a drink. He says, 'Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.'"
Barroso told Damon that he had to work if he was going to stay behind the bar, so the actor jumped right in and started mixing drinks.
Does Matt Damon have a stepdaughter?
Matt Damon has one stepdaughter, Alexia. Barroso also told Vogue Australia that from the beginning, Damon embraced Alexia as his own. She said, "We definitely had a connection right away, 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."
Barroso went on, "But I was like, 'I can't, I have a 4-year-old daughter, I'm not going anywhere' … and that was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter."
Related: Ben Affleck Reveals Matt Damon Was a Disgusting Roommate: 'God Bless His Wife'
Who are Matt Damon's kids?
Alexia Barroso (1999)
Alexia was born in Argentina and is the daughter of Luciana Barroso and her ex-husband, Arbello Barroso. Alexia's exact birthday hasn't been made public, although some corners of the internet put it at April 18, 1999, which would make her 24 at the time of this writing.
Over the years, Damon has shared that he and Alexia are close and that he even taught her how to drive in 2015. Damon told USA Today that year, "My oldest daughter just got her license yesterday. She would drive last year just to school every morning. We'd get in the car and drive."
Alexia also seems interested in following her stepfather's career path, or at least she may have been at one time. She had a cameo in his movie We Bought A Zoo.
Isabella Damon (June 11, 2006)
Isabella joined the family a year after her parents' wedding, in 2006. Damon and Barroso don't speak about their daughters with the public too frequently, but in April 2021 Damon did share that Isabella, now 17, is known for her sense of humor.
During an interview with Seth Meyers, Damon revealed that Isabella loves to make jokes at his expense... all the time. He said, "My 16-year-old likes to give me a hard time and she is very clear about not wanting to see anything that I'm in if she thinks it might be good." Damon further added that Isaballa will go see one of his movies, but only if the reviews are really, really bad.
"Oh my God," Meyers said. "That is the most ice-cold 16-year-old thing I've ever heard."
Gia Damon (Aug. 20, 2008)
Gia, who is going on 15, joined the family two years after Isabella. Like her older sister, she was born in Miami.
Damon and Barroso didn't hesitate to bring their children on the road, even after Gia arrived and left them "outnumbered," Damon said shortly after the child's birth.
In 2010, Damon shared that Gia and her sisters had traveled with him while he filmed True Grit and Invictus, and even got to meet Nelson Mandela. "Lucy and I didn't even talk to him, we just let him hang out with the kids," he told David Letterman. "He bounced them on his knee. Isabella and Gia couldn't take their eyes off him."
Stella Damon (Oct. 20, 2010)
Damon and Barroso completed their family in October 2010 when Stella Damon, now 12, was born in New York. Following her arrival, Damon revealed to People that Stella surprised her mom and dad when she was born early.
"It’s been pretty crazy," he said. "The baby came a couple of weeks early. It’s our fourth, so we’ve done it before—but it’s a whole new dynamic."
Do Matt Damon's kids act?
So far, only Alexia Barroso has waded into the acting pool. It's unknown if Damon's younger three daughters have any ambitions to act.
What has Matt Damon said about fatherhood?
Matt Damon has been open about the ups and downs that fatherhood has brought to his life. In 2017, he revealed to Today that he and his wife have pretty strict rules about the free gifts his daughters have received. "They don't need anything. So we send everything on to people who need it," he said. "When people send stuff to my kids, my kids have everything they need so we pass it right on. This is the life we're giving them. It's hard to figure out how to try to give them perspective. It's a source of tension in the family at times."
Several years later, Damon spoke to Fatherly about how being a dad impacted his role in the movie Stillwater, in which he plays a father who travels to France to try to prove his imprisoned daughter's innocence. "I feel like fatherhood has made my job a lot easier in a lot of ways," he said. "All those emotions that I used to have to reach for are just readily accessible. I don’t have to twist myself into knots to find something—it’s just sitting right there all the time."
He also opened up to Fatherly about not spoiling his kids (a running theme in his household). After being asked how he avoids raising Hollywood brats, Damon was upfront. "We’re trying. They seem great right now," he said. "But they’re growing up with so much more s--t than we have—they’re just growing up with more stuff. I do feel like travel does mitigate that. I think it’s about getting them out of their own experience and into the world and seeing the world, not just from the inside of a Four Seasons hotel."
