Matt Damon Shares How Wife Luciana Helped Him Through Depression
Matt Damon is opening up about the struggles he's faced behind the scenes.
There's no denying the Oscar winner's star power, as he's been a leading man in a variety of acclaimed movies throughout his career. However, he recently explained that there was one film that fell short of his expectations, causing him to fall "into a depression."
"I think, without naming any particular movies, that sometimes you find yourself in a movie that perhaps might not be what you had hoped it would be," Matt told reporter Jake Hamilton on the July 8 episode of Jake's Takes, "and you're still making it."
At the time, he felt like he had inconvenienced his family, including his wife Luciana Barroso and their daughters Alexia, 24, and Isabella, 17, Gia, 14, and Stella, 12.
"I remember halfway through production and you've still got months to go and you've taken your family somewhere," the Oppenheimer actor noted, "and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, 'What have I done?'"
It was then that Luciana—who he's been married to for nearly two decades—offered advice that he still follows today.
"She just said, 'We're here now,'" remembered Matt. "I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor. And what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort."
He added, "If you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you're a pro—and she really helped me with that."
And while the 52-year-old didn't reveal the movie he was referring to, he previously discussed his disdain for the 2016 film The Great Wall.
"I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor, knowing you're in a turkey and going, 'OK, I've got four more months. It's the up-at-dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I'm doing it,'" he said on the WTF podcast in 2021. "That's as s--tty as you can feel creatively. I hope to never have that feeling again."
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