Entertainment News

Home

Movies

Streaming

Music

Quizzes

Newsletter

Matt Damon casually used homophobic slur until daughter told him to stop

LAURENT VU/JP PARIENTE/SIPA/Sipa USA

Matt Damon still casually used homophobic slur until his daughter finally told him to stop

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 8/2/21

Matt Damon has ignorantly been using the "f-slur for a homosexual" up until very recently.

In this new profile for The Sunday Times, the 50-year-old actor and filmmaker freely (and inexplicably) admitted he casually threw out the "f-slur" while eating dinner with his family. Damon and his wife, Luciana Barroso, share three daughters—15-year-old Isabella, 12-year-old Gia and 10-year-old Stella—and one of them had to educate a grown man on why referring to LGBTQ+ people in derogatory terms is problematic.

"The word that my daughter calls the 'f-slur for a homosexual' was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” the Oscar winner told The Sunday Times. "I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table."

"I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!" Damon added (h/t Entertainment Weekly). "She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, 'I retire the f-slur!' I understood."

Obviously, this didn't go over well:

So Matt Damon just figured out "months ago", by way of a "treatise" from a child, that he's not supposed to say the word f*ggot.

Months ago.

Months ago. pic.twitter.com/g8MRR39yVR
— Travon Free (@Travon) August 1, 2021

Everybody:
The national news media:
The trades:
TMZ:
Matt Damon: Y’know I said f*gg*t until like last Tuesday?
— Chase Mitchell (@ChaseMit) August 2, 2021

Matt Damon’s daughter: pic.twitter.com/ddxZ9SS8Xg
— Daniel D'Addario (@DPD_) August 1, 2021

I want to know what word Matt Damon has replaced f****t with.
— billy eichner (@billyeichner) August 1, 2021

Damon currently stars in Stillwater as Oklahoman oil-rig roughneck Bill Baker. Baker travels to France to help exonerate his estranged and wrongly convicted daughter (Abigail Breslin). The Tom McCarthy-directed film received backlash from Amanda Knox surrounding its U.S. theatrical release last Friday (July 30):

Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER.

/ a thread
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

I want to pause right here on that phrase: “the Amanda Knox saga.” What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No. It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede.
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

Everyone else in that “saga” had more influence over events than I did. The erroneous focus on me by the authorities led to an erroneous focus on me by the press, which shaped how I was viewed. In prison, I had no control over my public image, no voice in my story.
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

Damon's previously held (and again, very recent) stance on homophobic slurs is almost as outdated as the story in Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, the historical drama Damon co-wrote with Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener that's set in 14th century France.

More must-reads: