Matt Damon landed in hot water last weekend over an article published in the Sunday Times in the UK.
In the article, Matt Damon said his daughter had written him "a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous", after she left the table following him using the "f-slur for a homosexual" in a joke.
The actor said that now he has "retired" the word ("I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood").
He then received a large amount of backlash online for having only apparently realised it's a word that shouldn't be said in recent months.
Matt Damon has since released a statement to Variety in which he attempts to redress the comments he made.
The statement reads: "During a recent interview, I recalled a discussion I had with my daughter where I attempted to contextualize for her the progress that has been made – though by no means completed – since I was growing up in Boston and, as a child, heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to.
"I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly.
"To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was.
"I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice."
Matt Damon continued: "I have never called anyone ‘f****t’ in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind.
"I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself ‘one of the good guys’.
"And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst.
"To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community."
Matt Damon next stars in the drama 'Stillwater' and is one of the stars of 'The Last Duel', which was shot in Ireland and hits cinemas later this year.
