Matt Damon has been married to his wife, Luciana Barroso, for more than 20 years — but turns out her eyes were initially drawn to his best friend Ben Affleck.
“This is f****ing completely true,” Damon, 55, began during the Monday, January 12, episode of The Howard Stern Show after being asked if Affleck, 53, was around the night he met his wife. “After we’d been together for a little while, probably a few months, she admitted that — I think I met her best friend from high school and it came out that the two of them went and saw Good Will Hunting together and her best friend thought I was the cute one and she thought Ben was the cute one.”
He added, “So she admitted to me… I’m like, ‘You got the wrong one?!’ She told me that 23 years ago.”
When host Howard Stern asked Damon if hearing something like that “stays with you” over the years, Affleck and Damon pointed out that the trio now work together often — Barroso, 49, is a producer on The Rip and Affleck’s next directorial project, Animals.
“She’s a great producer and a really good friend and yeah, I never got that vibe from her. So I think something I did in real life rubbed it off,” Affleck joked, to which Stern, 72, and Damon laughed. “‘You know, in person, you’re different.’”
“Finally she met him and all that went away,” Damon replied.
Stern noted it would be “devastating” if Barroso “left” him and “ran off with Ben,” to which Damon wholeheartedly agreed. “If my two favorite people just exited my life? Yeah, that would suck.”
Damon and Affleck were the writers and stars of 1997’s Good Will Hunting, a film that earned them Oscars for best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams. Damon met Barroso six years later in Miami while filming his movie Stuck on You. The pair, who tied the knot in 2005, share four daughters: Alexia, 25, Isabella, 19, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15.
While speaking to Stern, Affleck confessed that he’s been “witness to a lot of beautiful lovely things from both of them along the way” in the couple’s 20 years of marriage.
“It’s a really gorgeous marriage and friendship and two people who when they’re apart and independent of one another are one another’s partner,” he shared, adding that he might not have been present the day they met, but “I have a feeling it’s improved.”
Damon, for his part, revealed that it was The Rip script supervisor, Steve Gehrke, who was actually with him when he first was introduced to Barroso, but he forgot that fact “for years” due to how enamored he was with her.
“I couldn’t remember who I was with ’cause all I remembered was her,” he said, which Affleck called a “good husband” comment.
“I’m like, ‘But also, you were hammered, and it’s a little vague,’ ” Affleck quipped. “But he’s smart enough not to say that.”
Affleck added that he should ask for Barroso’s friend’s number to bring the love square full circle, but Damon had bad news. “She’s married, I just thought it was a funny joke — I can’t resist,” the Odyssey star said, to which Affleck responded, “Story of my life.”
Affleck was previously married to Jennifer Garner from 2005 to 2018 and the pair share three children: Violet, 19, Seraphina, 16, and Samuel, 13. He later got back together with ex-fiancée Jennifer Lopez. The pair wed in 2022, but ultimately called it quits for good three years later.
