LIFE’S A BEACH
Matt Damon and Chris Hemsworth—and their families— share good times on holiday at Byron Bay.
Spending a sunny Easter Sunday on the beach at Byron Bay, Matt Damon, 47, and wife Luciana Barroso, 42, along with three of their daughters, Stella, 7, Gia, 9, and Isabella, 11, seemed less like tourists and more like locals of the northern NSW town. Working in their favour? Having superhero tour guides in Byron locals Chris Hemsworth, 34, his wife, Elsa Pataky, 41, and their kids, India, 5, and 4-year-old sons Sasha and Tristan. Back already after spending New Year’s Eve in Australia with the famous family, the Damons are now rumoured to be considering a permanent move Down Under. “Matt’s
telling friends and colleagues in Hollywood that he’s moving the family to Australia for a year,” a source told The New York Post in March. A rep for Damon denied the buzz. “Matt has visited Australia several times recently,” she said. “But he has not bought a house there nor is he moving there.”
Still, he’ll always have happy hosts in the Hemsworths. “Chris has been a big fan of Matt Damon, me too, and then when I met his wife I’m even more a fan of his wife,” Pataky tells WHO. “They are such amazing people. We have three kids, they have four kids, so we ended up making the same plans because everything we do, we do with the kids, so it’s easier
to do things with people that understand you. And they’re very adventurous too,” she adds. “Matt is an amazing dad and an amazing person, he’s so easy. And his wife is Argentinian, so we speak Spanish. So for me it’s a relief— yes, somebody I can speak Spanish with! We’ve become very good friends.”
Finding a balance between work and play is a priority for Hemsworth, especially in his marriage to Spanish actress Pataky. “Once you have children, every instinct and every moment of your time is consumed by that. You’ve got nothing for each other,” Hemsworth has said. “So, make sure you have date night even if it’s once in a blue moon, because most of the time you’re just too tired and you’d actually prefer to sleep.”
To that end, they take turns working and have a rule to never spend more than two weeks apart. Recently the couple co-starred in 12 Strong and, attending the premiere in Los Angeles on Jan. 16, Pataky opened up about how they were set up after working with the same dialect coach in 2010. “She showed us each other’s photos and we’re like, ‘Actually, that’s pretty hot.’ So I said, ‘OK, let’s go and have a date or else she’s not going to stop,’” she said. “And thank God for her. I really appreciated what she did to get us together because none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t even have had kids. It’s amazing.”