Matt Leblanc is a Happy Man

For the beloved star of Man with a Plan, growing older means getting the life he always wanted

- Henry Goldblatt

Matt LeBlanc has millions of fans around the world, but as the Man with a Plan star has learned, sometimes the toughest audience is under the same roof. Recently, he asked his 15-year-old daughter, Marina, to name her favorite character on the CBS sitcom. She answered without hesitation: Stacy Keach’s Joe. “I was like, ‘Really, not me?’ And she said, ‘Well, you’re OK,’” the star says with a laugh. “I think she gets enough of me.”

Bringing relatable, humorous moments like this to viewers is what originally drew the 52-year-old actor to the series, now entering its fourth season. LeBlanc’s Adam Burns is a kindhearted, married father of three who often finds himself exasperated by his brood, be it a daughter who says she wants to become a vegan (Grace Kaufman), or his Mephistopheles of a sister-in-law (Jessica St. Clair), who says she wants to become a better person. (Both of them fail spectacularly.)

Sitting in an Italian bistro in the tony Beverly Glen neighborhood of Los Angeles, dressed in a blue-gray hoodie with Carhartt emblazoned on the sleeve (“Free from the show!” he gleefully proclaims) and Levi’s, a black Porsche baseball cap pulled down low, LeBlanc has learned to draw as little attention to himself in public as possible. “It’s weird to go into a room full of strangers and everybody knows your name, what you do for a living, and how much money you make,” he says. “But it’s been long enough now that it doesn’t really bother me anymore.”