Matt Damon has revealed that his wife, Luciana Barroso, had a brain aneurysm around the time he was working on Oppenheimer. He shared the news in a GQ interview published Nov. 5, as E! Online reported. His first priority was to reassure everyone. “She’s totally fine, thank God.”
Damon brought it up while talking about awards season. He skipped the celebrating at the 2007 Oscars, the year The Departed was in the race. Oppenheimer looked like his second shot at a proper night out.
Then, in his words to GQ, a whole scary thing happened. His wife had a brain aneurysm.
He did not dwell on the medical side, and neither will this. Damon kept it brief. The scare happened, she came through it, and she is well now.
Luciana Barroso Underwent Surgery Before the Oscars
Barroso had brain surgery the week before the Oscars. One week. Most people would spend that stretch on the couch, and nobody would blame them.
Damon told GQ that Oscar night was the first night she felt good enough to get up. Her energy had come back. He framed it as the first real sign she was herself again.
Damon Describes Barroso’s Attendance at After-Party as Heroic
Barroso did not just get up. She got a dress, surprised her husband, and took him to the after-party.
Her reason is the best detail in the interview. According to Damon, she remembered that he had sat out the celebrations the last time. She told him that this time they were going out.
Damon called it heroic. He used stronger language than that, in fact, and said the night meant a great deal to him.
Barroso was about a week out of brain surgery on Oscars night. She could have stayed home and let him take care of her. Her reason was a seventeen-year-old miss of his. Damon skipped the party back in 2007, and she remembered. “This time we’re going out,” she told him. Damon called it “pretty f–king heroic” of her.
Recovery usually runs in one direction. The sick partner receives and the healthy partner gives. Barroso flipped it, and Damon clearly noticed.
The Couple’s Strong Bond Through Health Challenges
Matt Damon and Barroso married in a private ceremony in 2005. They have four daughters, including one from Barroso’s previous relationship.
Damon has talked before about what keeps them together, and E! Online pulled those earlier comments alongside the GQ story. He once told Entertainment Tonight that marriage is a crazy idea, but that he loves being married to his wife. If there is a secret, he said, it is to feel lucky.
He meant it literally. Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015 that his brother married at 26 and had been married ten years before Damon even met Barroso. Watching that happy marriage, he figured it simply was not going to happen for him. Then it did.
Feeling lucky sounds soft until you hear it next to this story. A man who once assumed he would never find his person nearly faced losing her. Then he watched her pull on a dress a week after brain surgery to give him the night he had missed.
How long her recovery took, or what the months after looked like, Matt Damon did not say. He said she is fine. For now, that is the whole update, and it is a good one.
Sources: E! Online
