Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were teenage friends who became first-time Oscars winners in their 20s and have now sustained a decades-long career and friendship in Hollywood. Now, they're also going through another milestone together – becoming empty-nesters.
Matt and his wife of 21 years, Luciana, have four daughters – Alexia, 27, Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15. Ben, meanwhile, is dad to three children — Violet, 20, 17-year-old Fin, and Samuel, 14, — with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.
© Getty Images"We’re at very similar stages with the kids, and it’s definitely a new phase of life,” Matt said of him and Ben, admitting, "it doesn’t take much to get us emotional at this point".
"I feel like we are facing it and embracing the fact that it’s happening," the actor told People magazine. "We’ve been talking a lot about presence and about really trying to be in the moment, and because you can’t slow time down, the only way to really do it is to really be there and be in it."
Matt's two eldest are already out of the house, as is Ben's eldest, daughter Violet, who is attending Yale University in Connecticut.
Matt and Luciana have been embracing the upcoming changes and making the most of the time they do have with their daughters, with the four girls all joining their parents in London for the world premiere of Matt's new movie The Odyssey.
Matt, who plays Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated blockbuster, looked dapper in a classic suit, but all eyes were on Luciana, who looked incredible in a Gabriela Hearst Tibor Rope Strapless Column Maxi Dress, and their girls.
© Variety via Getty ImagesMatt and Ben have never shied away from their close friendship – they once shared a bank account – and Matt admitted that they were "the only people who believed in each other".
"I think Ben and I bolstered each other when we were young. We were in our teens and we were coming down here to New York on the train or on the bus to audition for things, for The Mickey Mouse Club… we had families, but they weren’t in the entertainment business."
"And I think you need to have that kind of defy-the-odds mentality to go into this life because it’s a bit of the circus life and it’s not a normal way to go."
© Getty ImagesBen and Matt met when they were eight and ten-years-old, respectively, and grew up living down the block from each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They were both uncredited extras in the baseball crowd in the 1989 film Field of Dreams, and Matt went on to study writing at Harvard and it was here, during a creative writing class, that he began the script for Good Will Hunting. Ben then came on board, and the film won them their first Oscar, when Ben was 25 and Matt 27, for Best Original Screenplay.
They went on to star in, write or produce 14 other films together, including Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Air.
