Matt Damon Reveals He and His Wife Have Matching Tattoos Honoring Heath Ledger

09/14/2021 09:48 am EDT

 Matt Damon worked with the late, great Heath Ledger on the 2005 film The Brothers Grimm, and that experience and the friendship that grew from it made a lasting impact on Damon for life. The star of The Last Duel recently opened up to GQ about the fact that he and his wife of 15 years, Luciana Barroso, have matching tattoos that serve as tributes to Ledger. 

After Ledger's passing in 2008, Damon and Barroso decided to use a "little creative blessing" to get their first tattoos. "She just announced it. We were in our apartment in Manhattan and she was like, 'We're getting tattoos.' I was like, 'Okay,'" said Damon of his wife. They went straight to the New York-based tattoo artist who had worked with Ledger several times, Scott Campbell. "I told him if I ever got a tattoo he was my first phone call," Damon explained. Not only did Damon get a "Lucy" tattoo as a tribute to his wife, but he also got a "strange loopy line heading up toward his shoulder."

"That's something that Heath had on his arm. Heath was an incredibly restless, creative person," the Stillwater star said. "Like, I talked to the person who did his hair on The Patriot and she said he hated sitting still so much 'that by the time I got the wig on and I set it and everything, and I'd finished, he'd get up and there would be a sculpture of bobby pins that he'd done.'"

"This stuff just flowed out of him. He was really special. I just wanted to get something that Heath had. Scott showed me his laptop and I said, 'Scott, what's that one?' And he goes, 'I have no idea — I think that's just some shit that Heath squiggled.' And I went, 'That's the one I want.'" Barroso also got the design tattooed on her foot. Damon has his four daughters' names — Alexia, Isabella, Gia and Stella — tattooed on his arm, but the Ledger-inspired tattoo holds a special place In his heart. "It's like a little creative little blessing," Damon said. "It's like an angel that looks over all these names that are on the arm."

Damon had previously opened up about Ledger's death by accidental overdose in another interview with GQ in 2016. "There were things that he did where I couldn't have got there in three lifetimes. And there were ways in which he was like a puppy dog. You wanted to protect him," Damon said. "[His death was] just f—ing pointless."

Disclosure: PopCulture. is owned by Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.