Matt Damon reveals that his eldest daughter, Alexia Barroso, has recovered from COVID-19.
“Our oldest daughter’s in college,” the actor told Dublin’s Spin 1038 radio on Wednesday. “Obviously, that’s been shut down. But she’s in New York City, and she had COVID really early on, along with her roommates, and got through it fine.”
He went on to say 21-year-old Alexia — who’s from his wife Luciana Barroso’s first marriage and whom Damon has raised as his own — is doing OK now. They will “reunite with” Alexia, who had a small role in Damon’s film We Bought a Zoo, “at the end of the month,” he said.
Damon moved to Dublin in March with Luciana, whom he married in 2005, and their three youngest daughters — Isabella, 13, Gia, 11, and Stella, 9 — to shoot the film The Last Duel. Production, which had started in France, was halted due to the coronavirus, but they stayed in the Dublin suburb Dalkey, which he said has been “like a fairytale” and “one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been.”
Because they planned to be there for several months, Damon said they have been fortunate when it comes to schooling their three younger daughters.
“Obviously what’s going on the world is horrible, but for my family, it timed out right,” he told hosts Nathan O’Reilly and Graham O Toole. “I’m with my whole family, [minus Alexia], I’ve got my kids, and we have teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks. So we’ve got what nobody else has, which is actual, live human beings teaching our kids. All their friends, you know, the schools are all shut down down back home [in L.A.] and all the kids are doing remote learning, so we feel guilty. We’ve got this kind of incredible set up.”
And in a few weeks, the whole family will be back together in the U.S.
“We’re going to go back to Los Angeles and [Alexia’s] going to come out so we’ll all be together and figure out what the heck we’re going to do,” he said. “It’s such an odd limbo that we’re all in.”
Damon went on to express worry for “Lucy’s mom and my mom. It’s scary for that generation. Everyone’s kind of — I think we’ve all got the message now. Everybody’s doing the isolation and social distancing and hand-washing and everything we can to mitigate this, but it’s frightening, certainly, for our parents.” (Damon’s dad died in 2017 after a long battle with cancer.)
Damon also touched on his role in Contagion, which has been compared to the coronavirus pandemic. (He and other cast members made PSAs promoting hand-washing.)
“The whole thing is tragic and sad,” he said. “I hope some good can come out of it. Luckily this isn’t as lethal as it might have been, so maybe this was a really good dry run for the big one that might come because these things do come along every few decades so it’s best to be ready for it.”
