A huge part of what makes the 24 Hours of Le Mans so difficult is that both the cars and the people driving them must last an entire day. For the drivers, the endurance race is an exhausting affair, requiring them to stay awake behind the wheel despite having very little time to rest. It turns out that the Le Mans-centered Ford v Ferrari also proved to be an endurance test for Matt Damon’s daughter, who fell asleep during the movie… twice. The actor recalled:
It was a little past bed-time. She said to me, 'Dad, I fell asleep twice, but only for 10 seconds.' She said it was really exciting.
Okay, so Matt Damon’s daughter Stella isn’t cut out for the 24 Hours of Le Mans just yet. The 9-year-old couldn’t quite make it through the two-and-a-half hours of Ford v Ferrari without a couple of pit stops in dreamland. But as anyone who has seen the movie knows, her naps were not in any way an indictment of the entertainment value of the film and were in fact completely understandable.
Matt Damon’s daughter Stella is only 9-years-old, and Ford v Ferrari isn’t exactly a short movie for a kid to sit through. In addition, Stella first saw Ford v Ferrari, in which her dad plays the legendary Carroll Shelby, at the movie’s the Los Angeles world premiere. It was the first time Matt Damon had ever taken his wife and four daughters all to one of his films. And as Matt Damon told USA Today, it was past her bedtime when they saw it.
The combined soporific properties of a long film and a late start time stacked the odds against Stella Damon, just as the odds were stacked against Ford when it took on Ferrari at Le Mans. But despite falling short and succumbing to sleep, she still put up a valiant effort, only falling asleep twice and according to her, only for 10 seconds each time.
That 10-second figure sounds like, in classic kid fashion, Matt Damon’s daughter might be rounding down in a major way, but it’s still sweet. It sounds like she wanted to confess that she did fall asleep, but also wanted her dad to know that she saw most of his movie so that he wouldn’t think she dozed off because she was bored or didn’t like it.
Matt Damon’s daughter apparently found the movie really exciting, and while I don’t know how interested she was in the car development aspects of the story (unless she has serious automotive interests like Ken Mile’s son in the film played by Noah Jupe), there is no arguing that the racing sequences in Ford v Ferrari should be exciting to anyone with a pulse, young or old.
Stella Damon wasn’t the only one who liked Ford v Ferrari. The audience response was glowing with the James Mangold film earning a coveted A+ CinemaScore to go along with its widespread critical acclaim. It also won the weekend with an over $31 million debut.
Ford v Ferrari is now playing. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what other movies and potential Oscar contenders are on the way this year.
