Matt Damon Stopped Using the ‘F-Slur’ Just a Few Months Ago After a Lecture From His Daughter

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Matt Damon said he stopped using the “f-slur for a homosexual” a few months ago, after he made a joke at dinner that prompted one of his daughters to write “a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous.”

“I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table,” Damon told the U.K.’s Sunday Times. “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.”

Damon said the homophobic “f-slur” was “commonly used” during his childhood, “with a different application.”

The 50-year-old actor has three daughters, ages 15, 12, and 10. He is also the stepfather to his wife’s 22-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.

During the interview with the Times, Damon also acknowledged controversial comments he made about producer Harvey Weinstein, when the accusations of sexual assault first emerged.

“As the father of four daughters, this is the kind of sexual predation that keeps me up at night,” Damon previously said.

In the interview published on Sunday, Damon recognized the backlash he received saying, “It’s a fair point. Anybody should be offended by that behaviour.”

Damon also seemed cognizant of the fact that his interview might be picked up and pulled “out of context…[to] get the best headline possible.”

“Everyone needs clicks,” he said. “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.”