Matt Damon has revealed he stopped using the gay slur that begins with the letter “f” just “months ago” after one of his four daughters protested.
The Hollywood star recounted the incident in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times.
“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” Damon, 50, told the newspaper.
“I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!’ 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.”
Matt Damon attends the “Stillwater” screening during the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival on July 08, 2021 in Cannes, France. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
Damon, who grew up in the Boston area, said he is now more mindful of what he says due to the way journalism functions today
“Twenty years ago, the best way I can put it is that the journalist listened to the music more than the lyrics [of an interview]. Now your lyrics are getting parsed, to pull them out of context and get the best headline possible. Everyone needs clicks.”
He added:”Before it didn’t really matter what I said, because it didn’t make the news. But maybe this shift is a good thing. So I shut the fuck up more.”
Damon was promoting his latest movie Stillwater, in which he plays an Oklahoma oil rig worker who must rescue his daughter after she lands in jail in Marseille, France.
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