Matt Damon revealed in a new GQ magazine cover story that his wife, Luciana, suffered a brain aneurysm in early 2024 and had surgery just a week before the 96th Academy Awards, where “Oppenheimer” starring Damon swept the night with Oscars for best picture, best director (Christopher Nolan), actor (Cillian Murphy), supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.) and more. So the couple didn’t attend the ceremony, but instead headed into town for an after-party, mostly because Damon’s wife was feeling guilty about skipping the Oscars years ago, when “The Departed” won best picture and more.
“I remember I was shooting the second part of ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ during those Oscars (where ‘The Departed’ won), so I didn’t go,” Damon said. “I was living in Miami at the time and I had a baby. (My wife) Lucy and I were lying in bed watching it and we were very nervous for Marty. And then when he won, I was jumping up and down in the room and I remember being very 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 could happen. And I turned to Lucy and was like, ‘Damn, we should be here!’ And then the next few weeks, I got all these calls from all the actors and the studio, like, “Hey, where have you been, man? I completely messed up.
“The next time it happened was in ‘Oppenheimer’ and we had this whole scary thing where my wife had a brain aneurysm,” the actor continued. “She’s totally fine, thank God, but (she) had brain surgery the week before the Oscars. But it 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 after-party, 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 really heroic of him to do this and truly meaningful.
While “The Departed” and “Oppenheimer” won big on Oscar night, Damon wasn’t nominated as a supporting actor for either film. But the rebuffs don’t bother him.
“It’s not something you can control. You just have to do the work, and that has to be the reward,” Damon told GQ. “Because it’s like if you don’t win, do you feel bad about something that was really positive? Don’t turn this into something bad. This is a delicate question. I always think of old movies when I watch them and it says, “So-and-so won an Oscar, so-and-so didn’t.” » You judge him in a totally different way. It’s no longer related to that.
Damon added: “The real way to do them, actually, is 20 or 25 years later. You’ll have a really good sense of which films have really lasted and really still matter to you. There may be hype at the time, or it may be a zeitgeist thing, but that doesn’t hold up. The goal for me is to make as many films that are set about 20 years later. It’s a cool thing. People talk to me about ‘Good Will”. Hunting’ and I realize they weren’t born when the movie came out. It’s just really cool for Ben and I to be able to see a new generation of people.
Even if the awards ultimately don’t matter, Damon will be back in awards season with Christopher Nolan’s record-breaking blockbuster, “The Odyssey.” Damon is widely expected to land a Best Actor nomination and some consider him the favorite to win. The same goes for Nolan for Best Director and the film for Best Picture.
Read Damon’s full GQ cover story here.
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