Matt Damon Says He and Ben Affleck Get Emotional Talking About Their Kids Leaving Home — and the Reason Resonates With Every Parent

Jul 30, 2026 by apost team

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have known each other since they were children growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They wrote "Good Will Hunting" together in their twenties and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1997. They have remained close friends for more than four decades. They co-founded the production company Artists Equity together in 2022. They are starring together in the upcoming Netflix crime drama "The Rip." And now, apparently, they call each other to get emotional about their kids.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE published July 17, 2026, Damon, born Oct. 8, 1970, opened up about one of the more unexpected things a decades-long friendship can become. "We're at very similar stages with the kids, and it's definitely a new phase of life," he said. "It doesn't take much to get us emotional at this point."

The parallel is striking. Damon shares four daughters with his wife Luciana Barroso — Alexia, 27, Isabella, 20, Gia, 17, and Stella, 15. Two are already out of the house. Affleck, born Aug. 15, 1972, shares three children with ex-wife Jennifer Garner — Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13. His eldest is also already in college. Both men, at almost exactly the same stage of fatherhood, are watching the same thing happen in real time.

"I feel like we are facing it and embracing the fact that it's happening," Damon told PEOPLE. The interview was tied to the press tour for Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," in which Damon stars as Odysseus — a man who spends 20 years trying to get home to his family. The parallels wrote themselves.

The conversations between Damon and Affleck, it turns out, go deeper than film projects.

"We've been talking a lot about presence and about really trying to be in the moment," Damon said, "and because you can't slow time down, the only way to really do it is to really be there and be in it." He noted that his family struggles with the same challenge every family does — phones, distraction, the general noise of modern life. "We're trying to be mindful of holding onto what we can," he said.

The friendship between Damon and Affleck has always been one of Hollywood's most genuine — two men who grew up together, broke through together, and have navigated four decades of fame without losing the ease of people who knew each other before any of it started. The detail that they now get emotional on the phone about their children is entirely consistent with that picture. It is also, for anyone who has ever watched their own children get taller and more independent and increasingly ready to leave, one of the most recognizable things either of them has ever said in public.

Damon's family dinner rule — "non-negotiable, and it's always been that way" — was the subject of a separate conversation earlier this year, in which one of his daughters pointed out that showing up for dinner was not the same as actually being present at it. That exchange prompted a family-wide conversation about what presence actually means.

At 55, with two daughters already out and two more almost there, Damon is doing what he told PEOPLE he was doing: facing it, embracing it, and being in it. His best friend, apparently, is doing the same thing — and when it gets to be too much, they get emotional together.

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Are you a fan of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck? Do you think their friendship — now spanning four decades and a shared chapter of fatherhood — is one of the most genuine in Hollywood? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and other fans out there!