Matt Damon revealed that his wife of over 20 years, Luciana “Lucy” Barroso, suffered from a brain aneurysm.
The revelation came during an interview with GQ, when the “The Odyssey” star opened up about the time he felt a tinge of FOMO while watching the Oscars from his bed with his wife and newborn.
It was the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, and Martin Scorsese was nominated for best director for “The Departed,” which was also up for best picture. Damon plays a corrupt police officer in the film.
“Lucy and I were lying in bed watching it and we were really nervous for Marty,” he told the magazine. “And then when it won, I was jumping up and down in the room and I remember being so excited. And then the next category was best picture, and The Departed won. And I realized at that moment that I hadn’t even thought that this could happen. And I turned to Lucy and I was like, ‘S…, we should be here!’…I totally messed up.
After this experience, Damon said his wife would not let him miss this experience again, even after a serious medical trauma.
In 2024, “Oppenheimer” was nominated for best film. In the film, Damon plays Colonel Leslie R. Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. The film won the award, and this time Barroso had a surprise in store, an Oscar-worthy dress, ready to go for the big night even though she had just had surgery after suffering a brain aneurysm.
“She’s absolutely fine, thank God,” he said. “But (she) had brain surgery the week before the Oscars. But that was the first night she felt well enough to get up and get her energy back. And she surprised me and bought a dress and we went to the afterparty, because she remembered the last time that happened, I didn’t do it. And she said to me, ‘This time we’re going out.’ And it was pretty heroic of her to do that and really significant.
Barroso and Argentinian-born Damon married in 2005. They had met two years earlier, and during a 2011 appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Damon said meeting his wife was a stroke of luck.
He was filming “Stuck on You” in 2002, with the Farrelly brothers at the helm. “We were supposed to shoot in Hawaii, and then the movie moved to Miami…and I had never really hung out in Miami,” he told DeGeneres, adding that midway through filming, a few guys from the crew invited him for a beer at a local watering hole. “They kind of dragged me in, and we ended up at a bar where my wife was bartending, and I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally.
“And eight years and four kids later, this is my life,” he joked. “I don’t know how else our paths would have crossed if that hadn’t happened.”
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