Matt Damon has revealed the "non-negotiable" rule he and his wife of 20 years, Luciana Barroso, live by.
The Odyssey star, 55, and Luciana, 49, will soon be empty nesters, but despite the upheaval in his family dynamic, he revealed the one rule he and his wife refuse to break, even after two decades.
The couple are parents to four daughters: Alexia, 27, whom Matt adopted after his 2005 marriage to Luciana, Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15.
"We have family dinner every night, and that's non-negotiable, and it's always been that way," the father of four told People.
However, despite their best intentions, Matt admitted they sometimes struggle to be present in the moment.
"One of my daughters said, 'Well, family dinner, last night we didn't talk.' And we realized, 'Oh my gosh, you're right,'" he revealed.
© Getty Images"We sat down for dinner, and you can get lost in that routine a little bit and not appreciate why you established the routine in the first place."
He noted: "'That's the kind of family mindfulness we're all working on."
Inside Matt and Luciana's relationship
© Getty ImagesMatt met his Argentinian wife in 2003 in Miami while he was filming Stuck on You and she was working in a bar.
Recalling their first encounter in a 2018 Vogue interview, Luciana shared: "Matt's story is that he saw me across the room and there was a light on me. And I'm like, 'Yeah, it was a nightclub — there were lights everywhere!'
"He had started getting recognized and asked for pictures and autographs, and then it got kind of aggressive because people are drinking and stuff," she explained.
© Getty Images"So he came and hid behind the bar… [wanting to] just hang out back there and have a drink. He says, 'Oh, I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you.'"
Luciana put Matt to work behind the bar, telling him: "'You know, if you're going to be back here, you can't just be standing there!'"
She added: "He had trained as a bartender for a film years before, so he started making drinks. And he made me a ton of money in tips that night, because of course everyone wanted to go and see him.
"So it turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!"
© FilmMagicDescribing their instant connection, Luciana said: "We definitely had a connection right away, it was so easy to talk to each other, we were very comfortable [with each other], and by the end of the night, he invited me to go out with his friends."
However, being a single mom at the time, she turned him down, but that just made Matt fall for her more.
"I was like, 'I can't, I have a four-year-old daughter, I'm not going anywhere'… and that was one of the things he loved, that I had a daughter," she recalled.
© Getty Images"He said, 'I love that you're a mom and that's your priority.' Some guys might have been different, they might think it's complicated, but for him it wasn't."
She added: "When you meet somebody that you have a connection with, that's just the person that you have a connection with, all the other stuff — the movie-star part — wasn't really a factor. It was just Matt, to me he's just Matt."
They tied the knot in December 2005, and soon after, Matt adopted Alexia, whom Luciana welcomed with her ex-husband Arbello Barroso, before they went on to have three more daughters.
