“Simon!” Matthew McConaughey calls out. “How do, sir?!” Even with just four words, he couldn’t be more Matthew McConaughey if he tried—charming, sincere, intense, 100% Texan and 101% eccentric.
Five years ago, the Oscar-winning actor wrote a memoir titled Greenlights. It wasn’t a typical memoir but more a mix of life lessons, short stories, and philosophical musings. Now he’s released a book of poetry called Poems & Prayers. For McConaughey, the two forms are interchangeable. This new book is another kind of memoir, focusing on his faith and how it shapes his daily life. He explores faith in the broadest sense—talking to God, seeking the divine within himself, plenty of “Amens”—but it’s also about faith in himself, his family, his career, and the world at large.
The gospel according to Matthew promotes a world of relentless positivity, rejecting hate or the word “can’t.” It’s a philosophy built on discipline, traditional values, and conservative ideals. But, true to McConaughey, it’s also a belief system that clashes with life’s messy realities. He misses his own birthday party because he’s too high, sitting in his car listening to a Janet Jackson song 32 times in a row. His devout parents had violent fights, and his dad died at 62 from a heart attack during sex. As a complete philosophy, it’s hard to make sense of it all—I’m not sure McConaughey does either, but he gives it his best shot.
His earliest poems were written at 18 during a gap year in Australia as a Rotary exchange student. Even then, he says, he was exploring deep questions. “I was on my own, without friends to talk things through. My conversations were all with myself. A foreigner in a foreign land, feeling lonely, trying to understand the world, my home, Texas, and life itself.”
What was he struggling with? “I was asking the same questions then as I do now: What is success? What do we reward in life? What are we chasing? What are we living for—just money and fame? And this was before I had any of that. Character and integrity mattered to me early on. I was calling out what I saw as the world’s hypocrisies.” At the core of his personal journey is learning to tell the difference between being the nice guy—liked by everyone, avoiding conflict—and being the good man, who stands by his values, takes a stance, and isn’t afraid to upset people along the way.
McConaughey’s movie career has had three distinct phases. First, he was the indie kid in his early 20s, working with directors like Richard Linklater in Dazed and Confused and John Sayles in Lone Star. It was in Dazed and Confused that he became famous as David Wooderson, the laid-back stoner who still hangs around high schoolers. His catchphrases—”Alright, alright, alright” (his first words on screen) and “You just gotta keep livin’, man. L.I.V.I.N.”—became indie film staples and have stuck with him ever since.
Surprisingly, he then shifted to being a mainstream leading man, playing lawyers in courtroom dramas (A Time to Kill, Amistad) and charming romantic leads in comedies (The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past).
Then, in 2011, came the widely praised third act, where McConaughey fully embraced his quirks, taking on roles that let his unique personality shine.Matthew McConaughey has created a series of memorable, eccentric characters. In less capable hands, these roles might have seemed unbelievable, but he made them completely convincing. Each bizarre quirk felt authentic—from Ron Woodroof, the homophobic rodeo cowboy turned AIDS activist in Dallas Buyers Club, to the unhinged hedonist stockbroker Mark Hanna in The Wolf of Wall Street, and the mysterious nihilist Rust Cohle in True Detective. Then there were his physical transformations. For Dallas Buyers Club, which earned him the Best Actor Oscar in 2014, he lost around 45 pounds to portray the AIDS-ravaged Woodroof. In Gold, he gained a similar amount by consuming cheeseburgers and beer to play the overweight prospector Kenny Wells. And for Magic Mike, he shed nearly all his body fat to become the ultra-fit strip club owner Dallas. This period of his career became known as the McConaissance, and it’s still going strong.
Today, he’s speaking via video from his home in Austin, Texas. The publicist warns that we can’t show footage from the interview because McConaughey isn’t “camera ready.” Ready or not, he looks great—trim, clean-shaven, and younger than his 55 years, but not unrealistically so. He sips from a large bottle of honey-based kombucha.
He once believed he would have made a good monk. “I revere dedication,” he says. But a friend who is an abbot told him, “No. You need to tell stories. That is your gift.” While studying radio, television, and film at the University of Texas at Austin, he was cast by Richard Linklater in Dazed and Confused. The role was originally smaller, but the director was so impressed with his improvisation skills that he expanded it. McConaughey never expected acting to be more than a fun hobby. So what did he think he’d do with his life when he started writing poetry in Australia? “I believed my calling was to become a monk.” Would he have been good at it? He pauses. “Yeasssss. I would have made a good monk. I revere dedication, a life devoted to God, seeing God in every natural thing, at all times.” But he thinks he would have missed out on too much. I expect him to mention sex and stimulants, but instead he says, “I had long talks with a Benedictine monk friend who’s now an abbot. He told me, ‘No, no, no—you’re a communicator, a storyteller. Don’t live a hermetic life. You need to communicate and tell stories. That is a gift you’ve been given. Don’t dampen it by becoming a monk.’” At times, he sounds like God’s own cowboy, his vowels stretching and contracting, words flowing together in long, unpunctuated sentences like a raging river.
He started writing at a time when his Christian faith was challenged. “I looked at the world and didn’t see evidence of the things I wanted to believe in. I didn’t want to stop believing, but I saw how we treat each other, the lack of trust, and a ‘win at any cost’ mentality. It made me cynical. Then I thought, ‘How dare you, you arrogant, entitled prick.’ Cynicism is a disease, I believe.”
McConaughey grew up in Texas with two older brothers and Methodist parents. His father, James, who struggled with alcoholism, made and lost fortunes in the oil-pipe supply business. His mother, Kay, was a teacher. Both were strict disciplinarians, though they didn’t always practice what they preached.
I’ve read many improbable stories about his parents that I assumed were made up—like the fact that they married each other three times. “Yep. Married three times, divorced twice. They never married anyone else.”As far as I know, there was never anyone else involved besides the two of them. I just think they needed some time apart now and then. That said, his mother recently told him that she knew Woody Harrelson’s father—a convicted contract killer—and that she became friends with him during one of her breaks from McConaughey’s father. This has fueled rumors (admittedly started by McConaughey and Harrelson themselves) that they might be half-brothers.
With his mother Kay earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival. Photograph: Chris Chew/UPI/Shutterstock
From my mom and dad, you learned expectations. There was a fear of disobeying or doing wrong. Words like “can’t” or “hate” were off-limits—they were treated like curse words in our house.
He says it was only a few years ago that he learned about his parents getting married and divorced three times. “I was around 13 the second time they split up. I thought Mom was just on an extended vacation in Florida. Ha ha ha!” He laughs heartily. “Dad and I were living in a trailer park.”
When asked if it’s true that his mother broke three fingers attacking his father, he exclaims, “Noooooooo!” offended by the idea. “It was the same finger—the middle one, every time. ‘Pop! Pop!! Pop!!! Pop!!!!'” He mimics her jabbing his father’s head with full force. “‘Katie, stop! KATIE, STOP!'” Then he makes a crunching sound. “And her finger would break.” In his book “Greenlights,” he describes his mother going after his father with a 12-inch chef’s knife after already breaking his nose, and his father fighting back with a bottle of Heinz ketchup.
And yet, they adored each other. His father always said he wanted to die making love to Kay. And that’s exactly what happened. “When I got the call, it was a Monday afternoon. I was in Austin, and they were in Houston. Mom said, ‘Your dad has moved on,’ but she didn’t tell me right away how. When I got back, she explained. They wheeled him out on a gurney and tried to cover him up, but my mom was in the driveway and pulled the sheet off. It was 7:30 a.m. From what I understand, they made love around 6:30 that morning, and right after, he had a heart attack.” When asked why she pulled the sheet back—did it reveal how he died?—he said, “It didn’t make it obvious. But my mom wasn’t one for formalities. ‘That’s Big Jim—he’s going out the way he came. Don’t try to cover up how he died. He’s in his birthday suit, right there. Don’t cover that man up!'”
Big Jim and Kay were devout Christians. “It wasn’t fire and brimstone preaching, but consequences were a big deal. From my mom and dad, you got expectations. There was a fear of disobeying and doing wrong.” What kind of things? “Respect. Not talking back. Making an effort. You couldn’t say ‘can’t’ or ‘hate.’ Those words were like curses in our house. You could say ‘cunt,’ but you couldn’t say ‘can’t.'”
Photograph: Derek Shapton/The Guardian
He remembers learning the word “hate” at school. “It sounded like a grown-up word to me—kind of edgy. My older brother did something to me on my birthday—I can’t recall what—and I said, ‘I hate you.’ My mom stopped the birthday party, grabbed me, and said, ‘Don’t you ever, ever say that word, especially about a family member.'” As for “can’t,” it simply wasn’t in Big Jim’s vocabulary. “If I said I couldn’t do something, he’d always reply, ‘Aren’t you just having trouble?’ One weekend, my chore was to mow the lawn. One morning, I’d been pulling on the lawnmower, and the damn thing wouldn’t start. I went inside and said, ‘Dad, I can’t ge—'”When the lawnmower started, he looked up. He’d hear that word, and you’d see him start twitching. He didn’t say a word, just walked with me out of the kitchen to the backyard. He tried to start the lawnmower, but it wouldn’t start. He bent down, unhooked a couple of things, and got it going. He calmly stood up, looked me in the eye, and said, “You see, son, you were just having trouble!” It was a beautiful moment.
If McConaughey was struggling with his faith when he went to Australia at 18, it’s not surprising. Greenlights is as much a manifesto for positivity as it is a memoir. At one point, he describes some of the bad things he’s experienced to show that they didn’t ultimately damage his outlook on life. Two of the low points are shocking—he was blackmailed into having sex for the first time at 15, and he was molested by a man at 18 while unconscious in the back of a van. Both are mentioned briefly in bullet points and never brought up again.
I tell him I want to discuss something serious from Greenlights and start to quote from the book. Before I finish the sentence, he’s laughing. “Ha ha ha ha! I knew that was coming. Ha ha ha ha!” His reaction makes me feel almost parental. I say, “Well, Matthew McConaughey, it’s easy to be glib about this, but I don’t believe the reality was anything like that.” He stops laughing: “Well, that may be how you took it. There was never any intent to be glib. There was absolute intent to be terse and concise, because I know, and you know, that if I go into that story then or now, that’s the headline. That’s why I won’t tell the details now, either.”
I say, “I’m not interested in the details; I’m interested in the impact these incidents had on you.” He replies, “Well, OK, did it crush some of my innocence? That young Matthew believed in the goodness of the world and that no one would try to harm me or anyone else unless I provoked it? Did it shatter my belief that first intimacy would be beautiful and innocent and natural? Sure.” I tell him the assault in the van sounds beyond terrifying. “Oh, yeah, and I got out relatively unscathed. It could have been worse, is what I’m saying. Talk about divine intervention. I remember waking up in the van right before it could have been worse. That idea of the dangers in the world, being aware, knowing where to be and where not to be, how to avoid dicey situations, being mindful of your surroundings—yeah. I look back and think, there are things I could have done differently to not end up in that situation.” He whistles, more to himself than to me. It’s a long, pained whistle of relief—a wordless acknowledgment that he somehow survived. “To be more aware and wise; a good man, not just a nice guy.”
Both incidents—especially the second—shook him into recognizing the harsh realities of the world. “We go from innocence to naivety to skepticism, and we stop there because we’re not going to become cynical. OK, let’s be a little more skeptical.” Now he’s become McConaughey the preacher, delivering a passionate, heartfelt one-on-one sermon. “We have to admit the evil and the doubt in the world. We have to admit it’s out there, and it’s inside us. And then choose to believe in something better or not; to make the choice, to say I’m going to chase faith instead of lying down to doubt. I didn’t go, ‘Woe is me, the world is a bad place.’ There are bad agents, and I guess we’ve all got a bad agent in our suit. So let me shake hands with that, look in the mirror, but also choose—do my best to choose—a higher path.”I’m going to choose a more selfish path. I think that’s ultimately more selfish, especially if there is a heaven. If we believe that our actions here determine where we end up—and again, I don’t know for sure—wouldn’t that be the most selfish way to behave? And even if there isn’t a heaven, Simon, I still believe it’s better for me because it improves my life here on Earth. In other words, acting nobly is truly selfish because it leads to a better outcome, whether you have faith or not.
Was the abduction a defining experience in his life? “Simon, it was defining in ways I don’t even fully understand.” I mention that it sounds like he was incredibly lucky to escape alive. “Yes. I’ve never felt as helpless as I did in that moment—so vulnerable and unable to do anything. It was a nightmare.” I say I won’t ask for details, but I wonder how he got away. “I escaped,” he replies.
After a conversation like that, it’s hard to know where to go next, so we return to the poems. “Revel in the Post” is a lovely, sensual verse that ends: “And even on a hot summer evening you can smell October / through the sweat where you left the windows open and forgot to shave.” I note that it sounds like a memory. He smiles. “It was a particularly wonderful night with my wife.”
Some of the poems are love letters to his wife, the model and entrepreneur Camila Alves, disguised as playful, instructional verses. One reads: “Best thing you can do for your marriage. / One way to surely get ahead. / Is get rid of that king-size mattress. / And sleep in a queen-size bed.” I ask if that’s based on personal experience. He laughs. “You want success? It starts with the engineering. Just get a smaller bed. We have kids, right? We saw a friend who had two king-size beds pushed together, and all the kids were sleeping in it. We thought that was great, so we did the same. It worked well—the kids had room to sleep. But then they stopped sleeping with us, and I was over by my nightstand while Camila was 18 feet away at hers. We’d shout ‘Goodnight!’ across the gap. Waking up with 20 feet between us wasn’t good for our marriage. So we got rid of it, switched to a queen-size bed, and now we snuggle up. It was genius. Much better.”
Alongside the poems are reflections on modern life and short critiques. At one point, he writes: “So many of us today are out to prove that truth is just an outdated, nostalgic notion—that honesty, along with being correct and right, is now a deluded currency in our cultural economy. With an epidemic of half-baked logic and illusions being sold as sound conclusions, it’s more than hard to know what to believe in; it’s hard to believe at all. But I don’t want to quit believing, and I don’t want to stop believing in… humanity, you, myself…”I assume you’re talking about Trump, I say. “In the name of progress, are we going to throw out every tried-and-tested truth of the past?” he says indirectly. “I don’t think that’s real progress.” So is he referring to Trump? “Well, there’s definitely something there. I don’t know what to believe in those pep rallies they hold. I’ve been around politics and politicians enough to see that the score isn’t always what they say it is; they don’t keep score accurately.”
The reason I’m not diving into politics right now is that I want to focus on getting my three kids out of the house. But I’m fascinated by it. Does Trump’s disregard for the truth concern him? “Well, sure it concerns me. But that’s nothing new. You can look back over decades and centuries and find plenty to question about what the truth was. Trump is just going about things differently than other politicians. It’s direct. He’s cutting out the middleman.”
But McConaughey says his comments about lost values aren’t just aimed at politicians. “It’s also about the parents I’m around. I talk to fathers and think: ‘What are you teaching your children? You don’t know. Don’t do that! That’s not what your child needs right now!'” What kind of things is he talking about? “I see parents trying to be best friends with their young children, so it’s all very friendly between them. It’s not about right or wrong. But that child is trying to learn from you. They don’t understand the concept of character or how to become a good young man or woman.”
Now he’s on a roll. “Delayed gratification, I believe, is one of the most important things you can teach a child. I’m noticing that more and more adults don’t value delayed gratification or sacrifice. And if we do that, we miss out on real value, real profit.” So many young people today, he says, lack a sense of shame. “I think you’ve got to have guilt. Please! Embarrassment. I wish people were a little more embarrassed these days. People aren’t embarrassed!” And his voice rises with anger or disappointment as he preaches from that imaginary pulpit. “You don’t mind that you half-assed that situation so poorly? Is this really your best effort? I would be embarrassed. Guilt. You’ve gotta have some guilt. I think it’s a very healthy thing, to a certain extent.” Where does his sense of guilt come from? “Shoot! I don’t know. I’m Irish, if that has anything to do with it.”
In recent years, McConaughey has expressed interest in going into politics. “It’s something I started thinking about six years ago. The reason I’m not diving into it right now is I want to do my best to get three kids out of the house. But I’m fascinated with politics.” What party would he align with? “It could be an independent party.”
So much of what he believes goes back to that recurring question in his poetry—what makes a good man as opposed to a nice guy? When he looks back at himself as a young man, he sees a nice guy who had some growing to do. He did some of it on solitary trips to the Amazon and Mali in the 1990s. “I put myself in these very monk-like situations to force myself to deal with myself.” But he still had plenty of growing to do. In 1999, he was arrested at 2:45 a.m. for playing bongos naked while under the influence of marijuana. The drug charges were dropped, but he was fined $50 for disturbing the peace.
I’m imploding from the wacky weed and decide it’s a really good idea to listen to Janet Jackson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes.”In his 30s, before he got together with Camila, he was so stoned that he missed his own birthday party. What happened? “I’d smoked the wrong weed—or not the wrong weed, but the strong stuff that’s common now. My friends had rented a place for dinner, and I was completely out of it from the potent weed. I decided it was a great idea to listen to Janet Jackson’s ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ 32 damn times in my car. By the time I went inside, everyone had left. I missed my own birthday party.” Did he cut back after that? “Yeah, exactly. And I like that song, but I don’t need to hear it 32 times.”
Did Richard Linklater cast him in Dazed and Confused because he was a serious stoner back then? “No, no, no, no, no—I was never a top stoner. I was the kind of guy who’d take a hit and then go study at the library for three hours.”
Professionally, a turning point came when he moved away from playing nice guys in romantic comedies, even though he was earning around $10–15 million per film. His latest movie, The Lost Bus, is a survival drama about a struggling bus driver who must guide a bus full of children and their teacher to safety through Butte County’s devastating 2018 wildfire—the deadliest in California history. In short, it’s about a flawed nice guy learning to become a good man.
As usual with his immersive approach, the role required a lot of research. This time, he had to learn to drive a bus—specifically, to drive one through fire and along cliff edges. Even today, he prepared for this interview by reading up on me. (At one point, he compared his mother to mine, whom I’ve written about.) I asked if he always does this. “I prefer to if I can. I like to have a little insight.” He says it makes talking to journalists feel less like an interrogation and more like a real conversation.
McConaughey’s shift from rom-com lead to character actor was about challenging himself. He was very successful, but his reputation had suffered. He was seen as a Hollywood hack who never pushed his limits. The challenge wasn’t so much about acting—he has always insisted that romantic comedies require as much skill as critically praised films—but about personal growth. Was he willing to turn down safe, lucrative roles (he was worth an estimated $160 million in 2024) and take a risk? After his last rom-com, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in 2009, he turned down every offer for nearly two years. Finally, in 2011, the roles he wanted came his way, starting with the psychological thriller Killer Joe. That led to the “McConaissance,” with McConaughey now celebrated for his bold choices.
When he stepped away from romantic comedies, he had just become a father and was enjoying life, but his work left him unfulfilled. “I was good at something I didn’t love. I wasn’t looking in the mirror thinking, ‘My life is more meaningful than my work—I wish my work was as meaningful as my life.’ I remember telling myself, ‘Well, good luck with that. If it has to be one or the other, it’s great that you feel your life is more vital than your work.’ But I thought, ‘I want to go for it. I want to see if my work can be an experience that’s so alive and challenging that it rivals the vitality I feel in my personal life.'”
He says he and Camila made the decision together and were committed to sticking with it, though others thought he’d lost his mind. “My brothers were like, ‘Little brother, what the hell is wrong with you? What are you thinking?’ And I said, ‘No, this is clear to me and Camila. We’re going to do this. We’re not going to bail. We’re going to ride it out.’ Twenty months later, the dam broke, and the offers I wanted started coming in.”
Life, he says, continues to surprise him. Even now, he’s still discovering new things.Shifting perspectives on the past can help explain the present. As a young boy, he says his parents instilled in him a strong sense of self-belief. His mother hung a framed photo in the kitchen of him as a handsome seven-year-old wearing a cowboy hat and holding his Little Mr Texas trophy. “Every morning, Mom would say, ‘Look at you, Little Mr Texas!'” That gave him confidence. A few years ago, he took a closer look at the photo and read the engraving. He discovered it actually said “Little Mr Texas Runner-Up 1977.” When he asked his mother about it, she told him the official winner was a wealthy boy who had cheated by wearing a fancy suit, so McConaughey was the true winner. He believes the difference between thinking you’re a winner or a runner-up can change your life. “Heck, would I be sitting here right now if I thought I was just the runner-up?”
Poems & Prayers is published by Headline. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. The Lost Bus is in cinemas now and will be available on Apple TV+ starting October 3.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Topic I dont want to lose faith in humanity Matthew McConaughey on belief celebrity and the lifechanging moment that shaped him
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What does not losing faith in humanity mean in this context
It means maintaining hope and belief in the goodness of people even when faced with challenges or negativity
2 Who is Matthew McConaughey and why is he talking about this
Matthew McConaughey is an Academy Awardwinning actor and public figure who often shares personal insights on life values and resilience He speaks about this topic based on his own experiences and reflections
3 What was the lifechanging moment that shaped him
McConaughey has mentioned several pivotal moments but one key example is his decision to step back from Hollywood to focus on family and personal growth which renewed his perspective on what truly matters
4 How does celebrity status affect his views on humanity
His fame has given him a platform to witness both the best and worst of human behavior but he emphasizes focusing on positive connections and authenticity to stay grounded
5 Can anyone relate to his message even if theyre not famous
Absolutely His insights are about universal themes like hope selfreflection and valuing human connections which resonate with people from all walks of life
AdvancedLevel Questions
6 How does McConaughey define faith in humanity and how has it evolved for him
He defines it as a conscious choice to believe in peoples inherent goodness shaped by personal experiences like fatherhood career shifts and moments of humility
7 What role does belief play in maintaining a positive outlook on humanity
Belief acts as an anchorit helps him focus on uplifting stories and actions rather than being overwhelmed by negativity
8 Are there specific practices or habits he recommends for nurturing faith in humanity
Yes he often emphasizes gratitude mindfulness surrounding oneself with positive influences and actively seeking out stories of kindness and resilience
9 How does he balance his public persona with his personal beliefs
He strives for authenticity by aligning his public actions with his core values such as using his platform to promote causes he believes in and sharing honest reflections
