Matt Damon: Fatherhood Keeps My Heart 'Full'

"The only way I can describe it -- it sounds stupid, but -- at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times? Everything is full; It's just full all the time."

Matt Damon wasn’t afraid to dive into daddy duty.

When the actor married wife Luciana in 2005, Damon also became stepfather to her then 4-year-old daughter Alexia and has never looked back.

“I jumped into the deep end with Lucy. I mean, Alexia was already 4. I was an extra dad,” Damon, 41, tells PARADE.

The couple have since welcomed daughters Isabella, 5½, Gia, 3, and Stella, 13 months.

“The only way I can describe it — it sounds stupid, but — at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times?” he explains. “Everything is full; It’s just full all the time.”

Despite his celebrity status, Damon has managed to keep his family out of the spotlight. His secret, he admits, is simple: there’s just not much to see.

“I’ve been left alone, even by the paparazzi, because what sells is sex and scandal,” he says. “Absent that, they really don’t have that much interest in you. I’m still married, still working, still happy.”

His lack of being in the limelight has caught the attention of fellow celebrities — including his former Ocean’s Thirteen costar!

“Brad [Pitt] and Angie, there’s much more pressure on them than there is on me. He asked me what my everyday is like,” Damon recalls.

“I said, ‘Well, I grab the kids from school and then we go over to the park.’ And he was just looking at me like, ‘How can you do that?’ Because he can’t.”

— Anya Leon