Matt Damon Says His Oldest Daughter Contracted COVID-19 While He Was Quarantined in Ireland

(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Matt Damon's family has been affected by the coronavirus. The 49-year-old actor, who is currently quarantined with his family in the small town of Dalkey, Ireland, made a surprise appearance on a local radio show -- SPIN 1038 Fully Charged -- where he talked about being in lock down and how the coronavirus has impacted his family. 

"I'm in the middle of a movie that I shot the first half in France and we were moving to Ireland and kind of right when we arrived in Ireland, the movie was shut down," Damon explained of how he ended up in Ireland amid quarantine. 

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The Oscar winner also revealed that his 21-year-old stepdaughter, Alexia, from his wife Luciana Barroso's previous marriage, was diagnosed with the coronavirus early on. 

"Our oldest daughter's in college. Obviously that's been shut down, but she's in New York City. She had COVID really early on along with her roommates and got through it fine," Damon said of Alexia. "So I shouldn't say our whole family's together. Of our four kids we've got the three younger ones and our oldest one, we'll reunite with her at the end of the month. But everybody's OK."

Damon's three youngest daughters, Isabella, 13, Gia, 11, and Stella, 9, are currently quarantined with their parents, and Damon admitted the family has the perfect set up. 

"It's incredible. It's one of the most beautiful places we've ever been," he said of Dalkey. "Obviously what's going on in the world is horrible, but for my family, it timed out. I'm with my whole family, I've got my kids, and we had teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks, so we've got what nobody else has, which is actual live human beings teaching our kids. All their friends, the schools are all shut down back home and the kids are doing remote learning, so we feel guilty. We've got this incredible set up in this place, which is gorgeous." 

Damon also commented on life imitating art thanks to his role in 2011's Contagion, a thriller about a mass virus outbreak that takes out a large portion of the population. 

"Anybody who says you couldn't have predicted this, just look at Contagion. Ten years ago we made a movie just by talking to experts," Damon said, adding that he's kept in regular contact with the film's screenwriter, Scott Burns, since the outbreak began. 

For more from the cast of Contagion, watch the clip below:

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