Matt Damon and his family are currently on quarantine in the small town of Dalkey, Ireland. He surprised the online viewers and listeners of a local radio show, SPIN 1038 Fully Charged, as he appeared in the show and talked about being in lockdown abroad.
Damon also shared how the coronavirus pandemic has affected his family and how he ended up in Ireland amid the pandemic.
"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," explained Damon.
Also, the Oscar winner mentioned that his 21-year-old stepdaughter Alexia who he considers his own child turned out to be COVID-19 positive 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," said Damon adding that he should not say his whole family is together at this time.
"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."
Loving Dalkey
Damon's other daughters, Isabella, 13, Gia, 11, and Stella, 9, are currently quarantined with him in Ireland, where Damon's family has the perfect set up.
"It's incredible. It's one of the most beautiful places we've ever been," he said about Dalkey. "Obviously, what's going on in the world is horrible, but for my family, it timed out. I'm with my whole family," the Bourne star said.
Damon also talked about his kids' education as they got along with the teachers who are homeschooling his children. "[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.... We've got this incredible set up in this place, which is gorgeous," he added. He also joked about feeling guilty as his children's friends are doing remote learning as schools are all shut down.
Contagion: Life Imitates Art
It is quite surprising how life imitates art as Damon's 2011 movie, "Contagion," can be somehow similar to the current coronavirus outbreak.
Contagion's IMDb describes the movie as an action-thriller about how medical experts, government officials, and regular citizens struggle in the midst of a pandemic while the CDC finds a cure to the deadly disease.
"Anybody who says you couldn't have predicted this, look at Contagion. 10 years ago, we made a movie just by talking to experts," Damon said. He also mentioned that he is now in constant communication with the film's screenwriter Scott Burns since the pandemic started.
The movie casts recently published public service announcements to educate fans about how to deal with COVID-19. Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, and Jennifer Ehle have worked with Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health scientists to share COVID-19 facts to help protect ourselves and the community.
"Everything that you're going to hear from us has been vetted by public health experts and scientists," Damon explains before discussing social distancing.
Damon is quick to note that Contagion differs from real life. In the movie, he played a man who was immune to the "hypothetical virus", but he now has "no reason to believe" that he is COVID-19-proof.
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