Matt Damon is sort of one of those teflon celebrities, have you noticed? He pops up every two or three years and says something wildly offensive, then people just forget it ever happened and he keeps working. Apparently, everyone forgot about his 2021 comments in which he shared that he only recently stopped using a wildly homophobic slur (he later apologized and clarified, but my god). Then in 2023, he got paid for a ridiculous cryptocurrency commercial in which he basically told dudes to man up and throw all of their money into a scam. Good times. Still, his personal life is unproblematic – he married Luciana over twenty years ago and they’re parents to four daughters, all of whom look like Luciana. He seems incredibly proud of his very wholesome family, which helps with his teflon celebrity vibe. Well, People Magazine gave Matt their cover this week and he managed to get out of this interview without saying anything horrible.

Back on dry land, the Brooklyn-based dad of four daughters with wife Luciana, 50—Alexia, 27, Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15—ticks off his priorities in this era of his life: passion projects, his longtime nonprofit Water.org and locking into the last few years he has kids still at home. [Matt Damon] acknowledges he’s in a “new phase of life,” as the empty-nest years approach. “Having two older kids who are out of the nest and knowing how fast these final years go, we’re trying to be mindful of holding onto what we can,” he says.

Damon’s family came to visit while he shot The Odyssey, marking the actor’s third film with Nolan following 2014’s Interstellar and 2023’s Oppenheimer. While bringing to life Homer’s hallmark monsters, from the Cyclops to the Sirens, the actor was alternately lashed with fake rain by “two jet engines, like 737 engines, blowing water on us” and stuffed into a giant Trojan Horse.

Could he have any phobias left? “I worked through a lot of them on this one, definitely,” he laughs. “Claustrophobia was one, but I hope I’m on the other side of that one now.”

“I remember at 25, I got the part in The Rainmaker. Francis [Ford Coppola] gave me that job and I’ll never forget that,” he says. “It’s just been an incredible journey. Some of the movies didn’t work, but ideally, in another 10 years, I’d like to just keep doing things that I can feel really proud of.”

At this stage in his life, “I just try to think about what I can control and what I can’t,” says Damon, whose Odysseus struggles against a predetermined fate. “And instead of railing against the gods about things that I can’t control, being fastidious and intentional about what I can and accepting what I can’t.”

With that, he says, has come a sense of calm. “I think starting out as an actor, you have to feel that way a little bit because the odds are so long against you. You need to have that kind of defy-the-gods mentality to go into this life, because it’s a bit of the circus life, and it’s not a normal way to go,” he adds. “But at this stage of my life I feel a lot more at peace.”

[From People]

The stuff about being halfway to an empty nest is sweet. I didn’t realize that the oldest is 27 now – Luciana was a single mom to Alexia when she met Matt, and Matt raised Alexia as his own, alongside her three younger siblings. I feel like Matt and Lucy are probably going to have a hard time when they really have an empty nest, actually. And Matt’s career really did defy the odds – it’s startling to realize how long he’s been famous and how long he’s been an in-demand leading man.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, cover courtesy of People.