Matt Damon reveals wife Luciana had brain surgery one week before the 2024 Oscars

Matt Damon has revealed that his wife, Luciana Barroso, underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm just days before the 2024 Academy Awards.

Matt Damon shares wife's health scare before Oppenheimer's Oscar win

Damon recently said Luciana had the aneurysm in early 2024 and had surgery about a week before the 96th Oscars. That was the night Oppenheimer won best picture, with wins for Christopher Nolan (director), Cillian Murphy (actor) and Robert Downey Jr. (supporting actor). Damon, who played Leslie Groves in the film, wasn't nominated, and the couple didn't attend the ceremony.

The couple did show up at an after-party, though, and Damon says that was Luciana's doing. It was the first evening she felt well enough to get up and had her energy back, and she surprised him with a dress.

Damon says she remembered that he missed the Oscars when The Departed won best picture, and she didn't want that to happen again. He called the gesture heroic and deeply meaningful.

Damon was filming second unit on The Bourne Ultimatum during the 2007 ceremony and watched from bed at home in Miami with Luciana. When The Departed won best picture, he realised the cast should have been there. He said he heard from colleagues and the studio in the weeks afterward.

As for Luciana's health, Damon says she is "totally fine, thank God."

The actor also reflected on awards more broadly, saying the work itself has to be the reward. He suggested Oscars would be better judged decades later, when it's clear which films endured.

Damon is back in the awards conversation with Nolan's The Odyssey. He is widely expected to earn a best actor nomination, and some see him as a frontrunner.

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