Matt Damon tries to be a present father to his four children, especially after mourning the death of his own dad.
“After my dad died, we moved down [to Australia] for four months and just went and camped all over the place,” Damon, 53, told News.com.au in an interview published on Friday, August 9. “I think because maybe he had never been, and it just felt like a place to go to make memories with my kids.”
Damon’s father, Kent, died in December 2017 after a lengthy battle with cancer at the age of 75. Less than one year later, Damon and wife Luciana Barroso brought their four daughters — Alexia, 25, Isabella, 18, Gia, 14, and Stella, 13 — down under for the first time. (Alexia is Barroso’s daughter from a previous relationship.)
“Every year we would return, even back during the pandemic,” Damon said. “We were down there for about six months, and it’s just like a second home to us. We just love it and we love the people and everything about it.”
Damon and Barroso, 48, also have “so many friends” in Australia, making it an easy decision to keep returning to the country.
“I’m coming back [this week] right after we open this movie. We’re going down for a couple weeks,” Damon added, referring to latest film The Instigators. “I mean, we’ve gone the last three summers, our summer, your winter, and everyone’s like, ‘You’re going to Australia? It’s the winter there?’ And we’re like, ‘No, it’s great.’”
He added, “We just have so many friends down there, honestly. I mean 30, 40 people. Family, friends, just so many people that we love to go see.”
Damon recently stepped out at the New York City premiere of The Instigators in July, posing on the red carpet with Barroso and their children.
Damon costarred with longtime pal Casey Affleck — Damon grew up with Casey, 48, and his brother, Ben Affleck, in Boston — in The Instigators.
“I remember one time [Matt] was steering the car [in a scene], and the car is standing still and it’s surrounded by a green screen, so it looks like the camera’s inside the car and we’re driving down the street, but you have to fake the turns,” Casey recalled of filming in the latest issue of Us Weekly. “So he turns the wheel in one direction, and our bodies have to go in the other direction, and you have to kind of sell it a little bit. He thinks he’s a real pro at this because he’s done so many Bourne movies. [But] he was going the wrong way. He’s barking at me. And I was like, ‘But you’re moving the wrong way!’”
The Instigators premieres Friday, August 9, on Apple TV+.
