Matt Damon has admitted his daughter had to recently teach him why using the homophobic slur "f****t" is offensive after he said it at the family dinner table.
The 50-year-old actor revealed that he had continued to use the word until just a few months ago, despite it being 2021 and most fully-grown humans knowing better.
"The word that my daughter calls the 'f-slur for a homosexual' was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application," he told The Sunday Times in an interview.
"I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table."
"I said, 'Come on, that's a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!'" he added, referencing the 2003 film in which Damon and Greg Kinnear play conjoined twins.
"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."
It's unclear which of Damon's daughters - aged 15, 12, and 10 - took issue with the word. Damon's eldest daughter, 22, was adopted by him when he got together with her mother, Luciana Barroso.
If you're surprised/disturbed/confused by Damon's revelation, you're not alone. Twitter had plenty to say about the Good Will Hunting star's comments.
"So Matt Damon just figured out 'months ago', by way of a 'treatise' from a child, that he's not supposed to say the word f****t. Months ago," Oscar winning screenwriter Travon Free wrote on Twitter.
"I'm around the same age as Damon and I've known this word was a slur since my teens. Pretty incredible amount of privilege to just realise it now," another tweet read.
"And he went to Harvard. Let that sink in," said a third.
Thank goodness for Damon's daughter - let's hope she can be on hand to teach her dad you can't put metal in the microwave and not to run with scissors.
