From their very quirky first meeting to having four children together, Matt Damon and his wife Lucy have figured out how to keep their marriage solid.
Will Hunting from Good Will Hunting and Jason Bourne from the Bourne series aren't the only roles Matt Damon plays. For him, the most important roles he's had to take up were that of being a loving husband and a doting father. And he got these from none other than his wife who he calls his "soulmate."
It began when Matt was in a bar in Miami where he was filming the comedy Stuck On You. He looked across the room and saw a light shining on his future wife, Luciana Barroso. “We were supposed to shoot in Hawaii, and then the movie got moved to Miami. . . . I had never really hung out in Miami,” he told Ellen DeGeneres, according to Vogue. Then one night, a few guys from the crew dragged him out to a bar - the bar where his future wife Lucy was the bartender. “I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally,” 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. If all those things didn’t happen.”
Of course, she has her own take on what happened that night, she told Vogue. “I was working as a bartender in South Beach (Miami) and he was shooting a movie there and the crew ended up in the bar one Saturday night… 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 laughed.
“But he had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff, and so he came and hid behind my 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.'"
“So I put him to work with me! I said, ‘You know, if you’re going to be back here, you can’t just be standing there!’ He had trained as a bartender for a film years before, so he started making drinks. And he made me a ton of money in tips that night, because of course everyone wanted to go and see him. So it turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!”
But what made her realize that he was definitely the one for her was that he happily accepted the 4-year-old daughter she already had. And now they are as happy as ever with three more of their girls adding to the family.
When you ask Lucy, she says she has “No idea! I just know I think we both feel, really, really lucky to have met each other so we don’t take that for granted. It’s life and marriage, so there’s ups and downs you know, but overall it’s easy and it’s fun. And he’s such a good dad.”
But Matt has a different answer. "We have a two-week rule," the 40-year-old actor told People. "We don't allow ourselves to be apart." That's how he stays close to his kids and manages to keep the spark going with his wife despite his busy schedule.
"When I did True Grit, I asked Joel and Ethan [Coen] to board the movie so that I was never away from home for more than a week and they did that,” he says. “So I was working like two days a week and I would fly back.”
It's because of this that he doesn't have to "suck up" to Lucy for being an absent husband. “We really don’t need those big dramatic moments running home with flowers shirtless,” he jokes.
References:
https://www.vogue.com/article/matt-damon-luciana-barroso-relationship
https://people.com/parents/matt-damon-two-week-rule-keeps-marriage-strong/
