Matt Damon’s family will soon be together once more.
The “Bourne Identity” star has spent the past few months self-isolating in Ireland with his wife, Luciana Bozán Barroso, and daughters Isabella, 13, Gia, 11, and Stella, 9. Noticeably absent from the clan is 21-year-old Alexia Barroso, Luciana’s daughter from a previous marriage whom Damon has raised as his own.
Speaking with Dublin’s Spin 1038 radio on Wednesday, Damon revealed that Alexia was in New York, where she recently recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“Our oldest daughter’s in college,” the actor said. “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.”
“So I shouldn’t say our whole family’s together,” he said. “We’ll reunite with [Alexia] at the end of the month. But everybody’s OK.”
Damon arrived in Ireland in March to film scenes for “The Last Duel,” which also stars Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. Production on the movie came to a halt, however, as the country began ordering residents to shelter in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Though many of his “Last Duel” castmates returned to the U.S., Damon instead chose to stay in the seaside town of Dalkey, known for its majestic beaches.
Photos of the star strolling about town have circulated on social media, while many Dalkey residents have reportedly taken to referring to their world-famous neighbor as “Matt O’Damon.”
“What’s going on in the world is horrible, but for my family, it timed out,” Damon said Wednesday. “We had 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, the schools are all shut down back home and the kids are doing remote learning, so we feel guilty.”
Asked about how he would compare Ireland’s response to the pandemic to that of the U.S., Damon had high praise for Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. Last month, Varadkar announced he would reregister as a doctor to help his country fight COVID-19.
“What a badass,” Damon said of Varadkar, who worked in medicine for seven years before entering politics. “That’s just on another level.”
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