Matt Damon & His Wife Have the Most Adorable Meet-Cute — Get To Know Luciana Barroso
Matt Damon’s wife Luciana Barroso probably never envisioned becoming one half of a Hollywood couple before she met the actor but after nearly two decades together, they are one of the longer-lasting couples in showbiz. Barroso stays off social media and has only given the occasional public interview. Damon and his wife do appear on red carpets together from time to time.
Damon, 52, isn’t afraid to gush about his supportive wife, 46, but Barroso still manages to remain one of the more low-key celebrity spouses in Hollywood. So, what is there to know about Barroso?
Who is Matt Damon’s wife, Luciana Barroso?
Lucina Bozán Barroso has been married to Damon since 2005 and is the mother of his three daughters, Isabella, Gia and Stella. Upon meeting in 2003, the Oppenheimer actor also became a stepdad to Barroso’s oldest daughter, Alexia.
Barroso is an Argentinian-born interior designer.
Barroso, who was born in Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, is described as an interior designer by several publications but was working as a bartender when she met Damon. The Boston-born actor was in Miami shooting the film Stuck on You. “I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally,” he recalled on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2011. “Eight years and four kids later, that’s my life. I don’t know how else our paths would’ve crossed if that didn’t happen.”
In 2018, Barroso recalled their adorable meet-cute in an interview with Vogue Australia. “He had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff,” she explained. “So he came and hid behind the bar … [wanting to] just hang out back there and have a drink. He says, ‘Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.'” However, Barroso decided to put the actor through his paces and told him, “‘You know, if you’re going to be back here, you can’t just be standing there!'” Damon ended up being a good co-worker. Barroso added: “He had trained as a bartender for a film years before, so he started making drinks. And he made me a ton of money in tips that night, because of course everyone wanted to go and see him. So it turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!”
Barroso, now a mom of four, noted that Damon was instantly accepting of her daughter, Alexia, from a previous relationship. After he invited her to go out with his friends, she declined and told him she had to get home to her four-year-old. “He said, ‘I love that you’re a mum and that’s your priority.’ Some guys might have been different, they might think it’s complicated, but for him it wasn’t,” she remembered. “When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that’s just the person that you have a connection with, all the other stuff — the movie-star part — wasn’t really a factor. It was just Matt, to me he’s just Matt.”
She and Damon married in New York City in December, 2005.
According to People, they tied the knot in a private ceremony in Manhattan. Before marrying Damon, Barroso was married to Alexia’s father Arbello Barroso. The couple were photographed renewing their vows in St. Lucia in 2013, according to Us Weekly. Guests included Chris Hemsworth and wife Elsa Pataky, Stanley Tucci and wife Felicity Blunt, and Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky.
Damon, who keeps his family mainly out of the public eye, has talked about how being married to a non-celeb has strengthened their relationship. “I got lucky. I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn’t double — it grows exponentially,” he said. “[Paparazzi] can try to stake me out, but they’re always going to get the same story: middle-aged married guy with four kids.”
Barroso is close friends with Chris Hemsworth’s wife, Elsa Pataky.
In 2018, Pataky gushed to People that she instantly became friends with Barroso after meeting and now vacation together with their families. “They are such amazing people. We have three kids, they have four kids, so we ended up making the same plans because everything we do, we do with the kids, so it’s easier to do things with people that understand you. And they’re very adventurous too, so we were just on holiday in Costa Rica,” she said.
The Spanish actress says she also bonded with Barroso over their shared language and even have matching tattoos. “We felt like we had to have something to remind us of those great moments we stayed together, and we decided to get a little tattoo [of three dots on their pinkies] all together and we say ‘We’ll have to do one every year,'” Pataky explained.
Barroso works hard to prioritize their family in the chaos of Damon’s fame.
Over the years, Damon has shared many tidbits of information that suggest Barroso has played an instrumental role is keeping him from becoming all-consumed by his career. In 2014, Damon told YourTango that the couple have a “two week rule” that means he’s never away for more than two weeks. “I think you need to be with the person you love as much as possible. My wife is my soul mate. I don’t like being apart from her,” he said at the time.
In July 2023, the actor opened up again about how Barroso helped him out of a depression after a project he was working on took a turn that he didn’t like. “Halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go, and you’ve taken your family somewhere, and you’ve inconvenienced them,” he told the Jake’s Takes podcast. “And I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about, like, what have I done?” He recalled that Barroso assured him that it was ok, telling him, “We’re here now.” He continued: “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.”
Damon also revealed that Barroso had encouraged him to take a break from acting but that has since been sidelined by the opportunity of a lifetime. “This is going to sound made up, but it’s actually true,” Damon said during an Entertainment Weekly roundtable with the rest of the Oppenheimer cast and the movie’s director Christopher Nolan. “I had — not to get too personal — negotiated extensively with my wife that I was taking time off.” The actor explained that, without even knowing if Nolan had a project in the works, he and Barroso agreed that, “The one caveat to my taking time off was if Chris Nolan called.”
Before you go, click here to see celebrities who are married to regular people.