Matt Damon reveals his wife had brain surgery a week before the Oscars

Hollywood actor Matt Damon has revealed that his wife, Luciana Barroso, had a brain aneurysm and underwent brain surgery just a week before the 2024 Oscars. He described the frightening family experience in a cover interview with GQ magazine.

Damon said, 'We had this whole scary thing happen where my wife had a brain aneurysm.' He added that Barroso is now totally fine, but that she had the brain surgery in the week before the Oscars.

Still recovering a week after the surgery, Barroso surprised her husband on Oscars night. In Damon's words, it was the first night she felt good enough and had her energy back; she got dressed up and accompanied him to an Oscars after-party.

Damon called the decision 'heroic' and deeply meaningful to him. 'She was like, "This time we're going out,"' he recalled.

Behind Barroso's determination was a regret from another Oscars night nearly two decades earlier. In 2007, Martin Scorsese won his first best director Oscar for 'The Departed', and the film also won best picture. But Damon was nowhere near Hollywood that night.

He was in Miami at the time, shooting second-unit scenes for 'The Bourne Ultimatum', and living there with Barroso and their infant daughter. The couple watched the ceremony from bed. Damon said he was so caught up in Scorsese's long-awaited victory that he never considered the film could win best picture too. When the moment came, he turned to his wife and said, 'We should be there!'

After 'The Departed' won best picture, Damon was flooded with calls from cast members and studio executives wondering why he had missed the celebration.

Years later, Damon got another chance at an awards-season triumph when Christopher Nolan's 2023 film 'Oppenheimer' won best picture at the 2024 Oscars — the occasion on which Barroso made her surprise decision.

Damon has long credited his family with helping him navigate Hollywood's demanding schedule, saying he and Barroso have traditionally maintained a two-week limit on how long he spends away for work. That arrangement was tested during filming of Nolan's 2026 blockbuster 'The Odyssey', when he spent three and a half weeks away during the first stretch of production — a sacrifice by his family that he noted in the interview.

Damon and Barroso married in a private ceremony in 2005. They share three daughters — Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15. Barroso also has a daughter, Alexia, 27, from a previous relationship, whom Damon helped raise.

In the interview, Damon also praised his longtime friend Ben Affleck for turning down projects that would have taken him away from his children, noting how their priorities have shifted since the two found success together with 'Good Will Hunting'. 'I just want to make good stuff and definitely keep working with Ben,' he told GQ.