The real story behind that Matt Damon Dalkey photo
IT’S the real story behind that now famous photo of Matt Damon on a Dalkey beach – and it turns out that wasn’t a plastic bag full of cans he was carrying.
The action hero had in fact crammed that humble plastic SuperValu bag with towels and swimming gear.
Local mum Siobhan Berry was walking down the stairs to the popular bathing spot when she happened across the Hollywood A-lister in March, shortly before the lockdown.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s Matt Damon’ and I had to pass him and I stopped and smiled and said ‘hello’,” she told the Irish Independent.
As Siobhan and her family were leaving, they met again and the affable Damon happily agreed to pose for a photo with Siobhan’s daughters, Jessica (9) and Ashleigh (11).
“He was really, really nice. He wasn’t swimming with his family and he was asking us was the water cold,” said Siobhan.
Siobhan agreed not to share the photo publicly, but as can so often happen when Hollywood royalty is involved, it managed to get leaked through a WhatsApp group a few days later. And, in Siobhan’s own words “boom! it was then all over social media”.
In the original photo, Jessica and Ashleigh are standing a social distance from Damon and the photo that went viral was cropped so only he remained.
Siobhan said she felt awful when she realised the photo had got out as Damon had obliged them by posing for it in the first place.
However, after hearing him being interviewed on Spin 1038 yesterday, she is relieved that he has seen the funny side of things.
“After hearing him on the radio, he obviously sees the funny side and the fact that the photo ultimately turned into one of the feel-good stories of the early summer.”
And as for the other stars of the photo, they were unfazed by meeting a celebrity.
“They didn’t really know who he was, we had to show them some of his movies,” laughed Siobhan.
The ‘Bourne Identity’ star cleared up the mystery of the contents of his shopping bag on the radio, and despite what some might have hoped, it was not full of cans.
“I think we just had the towels because I was with the kids and we were taking a dip in the water there and so we had towels to dry off.
“I think we just grabbed one of our SuperValu bags and stuff . . . we didn’t show up with beach bags. We were just improvising,” he told Spin 1038’s ‘Fully Charged’.
When asked how he would compare Ireland’s health crisis response to that of the US, he said he thinks Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is a “badass”.
“You’ve got a [Taoiseach] who just like goes to the hospital and starts working. I mean, what a badass. That’s just on another level.”
Damon has been staying in Dalkey with his wife Luciana
Barroso and three of his children, Isabella, Gia and Stella.
He had flown to Dublin to film scenes for his next movie ‘The Last Duel’ when US President Donald Trump banned flights between Europe and the US.
The Oscar-winning actor said Dalkey was “one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been”.