Matt Damon has insisted he has never used a gay slur in his personal life after criticism of comments he made in an interview with The Sunday Times.
The American actor appeared to say in the interview published at the weekend that he had “retired” the term “faggot” “months ago” after being given a “treatise” by one of his daughters.
However, Damon released a statement on Monday evening saying he had never used the word in his “personal life”.
Damon, who is regarded as one of the film world’s most bankable male leads, said in the original interview that the “f-slur for a homosexual” had been commonly used when he was growing up in Boston, adding that he had made a joke “months ago” in front of his family — prompting his daughter to leave the table.
Damon, a 50-year-old father of four daughters, told The Sunday Times he had told his child: “Come on, that’s a joke. I say it in the movie Stuck on You.” He added: “She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”
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The actor was previously forced to apologise after saying in 2017 — at the height of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault— that inappropriate sexual behaviour needed to be seen as existing on a “spectrum”. He later said he had been “tone deaf”.
In his statement released yesterday Damon said he had never used the “faggot” insult against anyone off-screen.
He said during the interview he had “attempted to contextualise” for his daughter “the progress that has been made — though by no means completed — since I was growing up in Boston”.
“She in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly. To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalised it was,” he said.
“I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”
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The actor, who became a household name for his performance in 1997’s Good Will Hunting and is probably best known for his roles in the Jason Bourne series of action films, said he did “not use slurs of any kind”.
