Class act! Matt Damon sends message to Dalkey school
MATT Damon has already revealed how lucky his own children are – after his family arrived in his Dalkey bolthole, along with their teachers, before the lockdown.
And now he has contacted local schoolkids with an inspirational message.
The US actor – whose stay here has become international news, mainly because the residents of the upmarket southside Dublin village have tried to protect his privacy – has now sent a message of goodwill to sixth-year students at the Loreto Abbey secondary school in the locality.
In a video, the A-list actor said: ‘Hey, this is Matt Damon. I want to just say congratulations to the Loreto Abbey graduating class of 2020.
‘You guys are awesome and I’m sorry you have to do all this from quarantine, but congratulations, what an achievement. Good for you guys, thinking about you.’
He and his family have been here for the past two months, as he had been filming The Last Duel with director Ridley Scott when the pandemic shut down filming.
He has been extremely vocal about his love for ‘fairytale’ Dalkey.
The 49-year-old is living with his wife, Luciana Barroso, 44, and the youngest three of their four daughters – Isabella, 13,
Gia, 11, and nine-year-old Stella – in a luxury five-bed property. It has its own outdoor pool and is reportedly worth €8million.
And when a New York Times journalist posted in a local Facebook group asking about sightings of the actor, Dalkey residents were quick to tell her they would not be spilling any details.
The star of the Bourne movies also praised Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as a ‘badass’.
WE take great pride, in this country, on our complete indifference to celebrities. It’s one of our favourite boasts, in fact, the way we pretend not to notice them when they turn up in our pubs, hotels and golf courses.
That’s why so many celebrities love coming to Ireland, so they can enjoy the experience of being ignored. Because, obviously, there’s nothing celebrities love more than being ignored. It’s clearly the reason why they’ve pursued global fame in the first place.
And the one thing we like more than ignoring celebrities, in fact, is telling the world that we’re ignoring them.
Remember the time that Beyoncé hired a bike and cycled around Phoenix Park, or when Taylor Swift rented out an entire castle for a Christmas break with her latest boyfriend, or when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West went to see X-Men in a Portlaoise cinema on their honeymoon? We did such a fantastic job of respecting their privacy that absolutely nobody knew they were here, much less what they got up to.
Wild horses could not have dragged a single detail from our lips.
Witness the fantastic job we’re doing of ignoring Matt Damon right now.
You’d need to use thumbscrews on the residents of Dalkey, Co. Dublin, to discover that the Bourne Identity star had been living in lockdown in the village for the past couple of months (…in a luxury rented house). We are ignoring him so successfully that our indifference is a phenomenon in itself, and makes daily headlines in the newspapers.
Each day we pride ourselves on how thoroughly we are ignoring Matt, wife Luciana and daughters Isabella, 13, Ghia, 11, and nine-year-old Stella, and we share the latest photos of the latest non-sighting of Matt and family on social media to prove it.
Somehow, however, The New York Times got wind of the fact that Matt Damon was living in a scenic seaside village outside of Dublin, to the complete indifference of the whole country.
The locals care so little, and respect Matt’s privacy so much, that when a Times reporter tried to find out more, the villagers closed ranks and told her to mind her own business – thus confirming he was definitely there and ensuring the story (movie star isolates in Irish seaside town) made front-page news and was reported worldwide.
And Dalkey, of course, is the place where all celebrities go when they really, really want to live in total anonymity. It’s why Enya, Neil Jordan and the pathologically shy Bono all occupy the same stretch of coastline in a country with no shortage of beach frontage elsewhere.
And it was actually Bono who prompted Matt to ring in to Dublin station Spin 1038, and give a delightful inter
view, so he could thank us for pretending he’s not here, at all, at all. He seems like a truly decent chap, does Matt, and perfectly happy to play along with the notion that he’s being treated like any other local in Dalkey and that it is completely normal for pictures of ordinary Dalkey folk, on their way to the beach with their togs and towels in a SuperValu bag, to go viral and prompt a million memes.
If you didn’t know better, though, you might suspect that our studied apathy towards international celebrities was less a true indifference than a sort of inverted fandom. You might think we were secretly overawed by famous people, and so honoured that they’d come here and rave about the scenery that it would be massively uncool to admit just how much we love it.
You might suspect that we have so little confidence in our lush countryside, our unique hospitality and humour, our wonderful food, music and culture that we’re still slightly surprised when anyone else notices, but will do our damndest to hide it.
You might imagine that we deliberately ignore a homegrown celebrity like Bono because he thinks he’s great, and then we have to ignore international celebrities in case anyone suspects that the only reason we’re ignoring Bono is because he thinks he’s great.
You might even go so far as to suggest that we dress this entirely counterfeit coolness and borderline begrudgery up as a respect for those celebrities’ privacy, when the truth is that we’re utterly obsessed with famous people, and following their every move, and we absolutely love it when the world marvels at how little we love it.
You would, of course, be completely wrong if you thought that.