American actor Matt Damon revealed that his stepdaughter had got infected with coronavirus while going to school in New York City at the onset of the worldwide pandemic.
According to Fox News, the 49-year-old actor appeared in an interview on Ireland's Spin 1038 radio show 'Fully Charged' where he revealed the news of his kid's illness. Damon has been stuck in Ireland, specifically the small Dublin suburb of Dalkey, for several weeks after travel restrictions took effect while he was there to shoot a movie.
Speaking to hosts of the show - Graham O'Toole and Nathan O'Reilly, Damon revealed that his 21 -year-old stepdaughter -- Alexia, was at school in New York City and had the coronavirus along with her roommates a few weeks ago. Alexia is the daughter of Damon's wife, Luciana Barroso, from a previous relationship.
The 'Ford Vs Ferrari' star revealed to the hosts, "Our oldest daughter is in college. Obviously, that's been shut down. But she's in NYC and she had COVID really early on along with her roommates and got through it fine. So... I shouldn't say our whole family is 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 stepdaughter appears to be out of the woods in terms of her battle with the coronavirus. As a result, the star noted that he's relieved to be able to reunite with her in Los Angeles in an environment where people finally understand what they're dealing with.
He told the hosts, "Obviously for Luci's mom and my mom, it's scary for that generation. I think we've all got the message now. Everybody is doing the isolation and social distancing and hand washing and kind of everything we can to mitigate this but it's frightening, certainly, for our parents."
The hosts then brought up the parallels of the coronavirus pandemic to a 2011 movie starring Damon called 'Contagion' that depicted what turned out to be a surprisingly accurate response to a global pandemic.
In the movie, Damon plays a father who loses his wife to the illness and must protect his only daughter from it at all costs.
Damon said, "Anybody who said you couldn't predict this, I mean, just look at 'Contagion.' Ten years ago we made a movie just talking to experts and asking them how this would look and kind of how this would go down."
The 'Interstellar' star concluded by noting that he hopes the coronavirus pandemic will prepare the world for similar outbreaks that may come in the future and be more severe.
Damon told the hosts, "It's upsetting, the whole thing is just... it's tragic, you know? And sad. I hope some good can come out of it. I hope that. Luckily, this isn't as lethal as it might have been, so maybe this is a really good dry run for the big one that might come. Because these things do come along every few decades... best to be ready for it."
( With inputs from ANI )