And around that time, your public persona began to calcify: the easygoingness, the shirtlessness, the naked Bongo drumming. You write about the feeling of becoming famous overnight after A Time to Kill came out. I’ve got friends that I still think are 40 and they're 62. I suppose, inherently, it's got to have something to do with whatever ideological timeline in life you think you have.

Why was now the right time to write the book? Did turning 50 have anything to do with it? I've looked at a couple of scripts, but nothing that is moving me out of my chair to go, 'I'm going to quit doing this and go make a movie.' It's going to take something kinda special right now to make me feel like I want to leave this character that I'm playing right now in this piece of art that I'm creating. I'm not working that frequently right now in making movies. To talk about this freely, True Detective was the best campaigner for Dallas Buyers Club there was. During the Dallas Buyers Club run, I had True Detective in your living room every week. Remember, I was back to back to back to back to back. Could there be another run and another name, something lyrical and fun and easy to say-it comes off the lips like that and has a bit of rhyme and reason to it? Maybe. Do you think we’re still in the McConaissance? You write about the period of time where you transitioned from making rom-coms to the more serious second act of your career, which has become widely known as the McConaissance. There were other times where I was arrogant to the extreme. What did you think you’d be more embarrassed about? Now, a few years removed from the McConaissance, the actor says he’s less preoccupied with his on-screen career.

The work, for instance, that helped him famously pivot from the rom-com hunk you want to have a beer with to the dramatic auteur you want to have a beer with, and that snagged him an Oscar along the way. He also attempts to dismantle it, emphasizing the diligent work it takes to get to that place-where he’s seen as the chillest man in the world. In Greenlights, the actor builds up the existing McConaughey mythos with delightfully voicey recollections of his raucous childhood and the (wet) dreams that inspired soul-searching journeys to the Amazon and Africa. I’ve bongoed naked until the cops arrested me.”Īnd that’s just on page 10. I’ve had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon. I’ve had seventy-eight stitches sewn into my forehead, by a veterinarian. “I’ve done peyote in Real de Catorce, Mexico, in a cage with a mountain lion. If you're wondering whether Matthew McConaughey’s new memoir lives up to his reputation as our preeminent frat boy–hippie shaman, this passage should help assuage all doubts:

Matthew mcconaughey greenlights