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Matt Damon at the Cannes Film Festival: »Stillwater« was presented there
Photo: Vianney Le Caer / dpa
Actually, the interview should mainly be about promoting his new film.
But a statement by Matt Damon that has nothing to do with the film makes the headlines.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, the actor explained that he had only recently stopped using the f-word - a homophobic insult which in German can best be translated with the word "fagot".
According to the interview, he made a joke at a dinner party that contained the f-word.
Damon's daughter, who heard this, went into her room and wrote a "very long, wonderful treatise on why the word is dangerous," Damon explained in the interview.
"I said 'I'm giving up the f-insult!' I understood."
When he grew up, it was common to use the term, Damon said in the interview.
However, it also had another meaning there.
"I want to know how Matt Damon replaced the f-word"
Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso have four daughters, ages ten to 23.
It is not clear from the interview which of them made him rethink.
The reactions to the interview were clear. General tenor: Why does the 50-year-old need his daughter's hint to recognize a homophobic swear word as such? "Well, Matt Damon just found out" months ago, "thanks to a child's" treatise, "that he shouldn't use the f-word," wrote Travon Free, the bisexual comedian, actor, and Oscar-winning director. "I want to know how Matt Damon replaced the f-word," wrote actor, comedian and producer Billy Eichner. On Twitter, the debate trended after the interview was published.
In the meantime, Damon has commented on the criticism himself - but it doesn't necessarily do himself a favor.
In a statement from which, among other things, the industry magazine "Variety" quoted on Tuesday night, Damon now writes that he never used the f-word.
“I have never used the f-word to refer to anyone in my private life, and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening.
I don't use swear words of any kind. "
Damon continues: Given that open hostility towards the LGBTQ + community is still not uncommon, he understands why his testimony has led many people to assume the worst.
"To be as clear as possible: I am on the side of the LGBTQ + community."
However, Damon's contribution is now also being criticized - especially because it contradicts what he said in the interview;
after all, he had said himself there that he had used the f-word.
Matt Damon's most recent film, Stillwater, was released last weekend.
Damon plays a father who tries to help his daughter, who is imprisoned in France;
she is accused of murdering a friend.
The film is said to be loosely based on the Amanda Knox case.
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