SerpApi.Org
The longtime couple had a rom-com worthy meet-cute back in 2003.
The Gist
- Matt Damon met his wife Luciana at a bar in Miami in 2003.
- The longtime couple tied the knot in 2005 and share four children together.
- Luciana typically avoids the spotlight and does not use social media.
After more than 20 years of marriage, Matt Damon credits luck as the secret ingredient to the longevity of his relationship with wife Luciana Barroso.
“There’s stuff I found out about her when we were married that endeared me to her, but it could have gone the other way,” he said during an interview in 2013 with Kjersti Flaa. “It could have annoyed me so much or been something that kind of drives you apart. So, I think a lot of it is luck.”
Though Barroso has led a private life, she frequently steps out in support of Damon. On July 14, the couple and their daughter Isabella walked the red carpet at the New York premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. Barroso says that, when it comes to her and Damon, their connection is all that matters. “When you meet somebody that you have a connection with...all the other stuff—the movie-star part—wasn’t really a factor,” she told Vogue Australia. “To me he’s just Matt.”
The couple maintains a “two-week rule,” meaning they don’t spend more than 14 days apart. “I think you need to be with the person you love as much as possible,” he once told YourTango. “My wife is my soulmate. I don’t like being apart from her.”
Since tying the knot in December 2005, Damon and Barroso have welcomed three children together. The Argentine also has one daughter from a previous relationship, making her a mom-of-four. “I want them to feel like they can do anything and everything they want to do,” Barroso once said of her daughters, “to just have to go for it and try and don’t let anything stand in their way, but not at the cost of somebody else.”
Ahead, here’s everything you should know about Matt Damon’s longtime wife Luciana Damon (née Barroso).
She met Matt in a bar in Miami.
Barroso and Damon’s rom-com worthy love story began with a spontaneous meeting at a bar in Miami, Florida back in 2003. The Good Will Hunting actor was in town filming Stuck on You when he spotted his future wife across the room.
“I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally,” he later recalled on The Ellen Degeneres Show. “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.”
Barroso also described the meet-cute in a 2018 interview with Vogue Australia. “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!’” she joked.
Soon people began to recognize Damon, asking for photos and autographs. “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,” Barroso said. “He says, ‘Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.’”
Barroso let him behind the bar on the condition that he help out. Having trained as a bartender for a movie, Damon started pouring drinks. “He made me a ton of money in tips that night, because of course everyone wanted to go and see him,” Barroso later said. “So it turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!”
Luciana originally thought Ben Affleck was cute before meeting Matt.
Long before meeting Damon, Barroso originally had eyes for Ben Affleck. While promoting his Netflix movie The Rip in January, Damon jokingly recalled the memory during an interview on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, per People.
“After we’d been together for a little while, probably a few months, she admitted that—I think I met her best friend from high school, and it came out that the two of them went and saw Good Will Hunting together, and her best friend thought I was the cute one, and she thought Ben was the cute one,” he explained.
He continued, “So she admitted to me... I’m like, ‘You got the wrong one?’“ She told me that 23 years ago.”
Although Affleck wasn’t present when Damon and Barroso first met, he spoke warmly about their partnership over the years. In the aforementioned interview, Affleck added that he has, “been witness to a lot of beautiful, lovely things from both of them along the way.”
The couple tied the knot in 2005.
Two years after their chance meeting, Damon and Barroso wed in a private ceremony in Manhattan, per People. The groom’s brother Kyle told the publication, “I am thrilled. I like Lucy a lot. They make a fantastic couple.”
Damon later reflected on his marriage 10 years in during a 2015 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I think marriage is insane,” he said. “It’s a crazy idea but I love being married to my wife... And I guess maybe, if there’s any secret... it’s to feel lucky.”
They have four daughters.
Prior to marrying Damon, Barroso was a single mom to her daughter Alexia. The duo then welcomed Isabella, Gia, and Stella, making them a family of six. Alexia was four years old when the future couple met in Miami back in 2003.
“I jumped into the deep end with Lucy. I mean, Alexia was already four. I was an extra dad…” Damon once told Parade. “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; it’s just full all the time.” The Interstellar actor went on, “It was very different, it’s true, but I can’t imagine my life having not gone down that road. I can’t imagine what my life would be now. I don’t want to imagine it.”
As for Barroso, the mom-of-four aims to raise her children with self-esteem and compassion.“We’re not always going to be able to be there when they have to make critical decisions in their life, so I just hope that they know how respect themselves and respect others and to not hold back and do what they want to do, but always have in mind the affect on another human being,” she told Vogue Australia.
They have matching tattoos.
Ten years after they first met, Damon and Barroso took a spontaneous trip to Scott Campbell’s star-studded tattoo parlor in New York City. The Air actor got his wife’s nickname “Lucy” inked on his upper right arm. “She just announced it,” he later said in an interview with GQ. “We were in our apartment in Manhattan, and she was like, ‘We’re getting tattoos.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’”
What’s more, the couple also got matching tattoos designed by the late actor Heath Ledger, who was close friends with Damon before he passed away in 2008. The duo co-starred in the 2005 film The Brothers Grimm and remained in touch thereafter.
“He was too bright for this world,” Damon said. “Coming off [the film, I was] telling everybody that I just worked with the best actor I’ve ever seen.”
As for the tattoo? It’s an abstract design that now lives on Damon’s right arm and Barroso’s foot.
“I just wanted to get something that Heath had,” Damon recalled. “Scott [Campbell] showed me his laptop and I said, ‘Scott, what’s that one?’ And he goes ‘I have no idea—I think that’s just some shit that Heath squiggled.’ And I went, ‘That’s the one I want.’”
Luciana convinced Matt to take a break from acting.
In 2023, Damon revealed that he had “negotiated extensively” with his wife to take time off. “This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” the Ocean’s Eleven actor told Entertainment Weekly. “I had been in Interstellar, and then [director Christopher Nolan] put me on ice for a couple of movies, so I wasn’t in the rotation. But I actually negotiated in couples therapy—this is a true story—the one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called.”
He went on, “This is without knowing whether or not he was working on anything, because he never tells you. He just calls you out of the blue. And so, it was a moment in my household.”
She avoids the spotlight.
Unlike her husband, Barroso is far from a household name—and that’s very much on purpose. The mom-of-four rarely does press interviews and does not use social media.
“I got lucky,” Damon once told Esquire of his wife’s low-key lifestyle. “I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn’t double—it grows exponentially.”
He added, “[Paparazzi] can try to stake me out, but they’re always going to get the same story: middle-aged married guy with four kids.”
Read the original article on InStyle
