He was once so stoned he missed his own birthday party, but the Oscar-winning actor has swapped pot for poetry. He reveals the trauma and triumph that taught him why it’s more important to be a good man than a nice guy
“S
imon!” Matthew McConaughey barks. “How do, sir?!” Matthew McConaughey could not be more Matthew McConaughey if he tried. And he’s only said four words. Charming, sincere, intense, 100% Texan and 101% eccentric.
Five years ago, the Oscar-winning actor wrote a memoir called Greenlights. It wasn’t a conventional memoir, more a collection of life lessons, bullet-point anecdotes and gnomic philosophies. Now he has written a book of poetry called Poems & Prayers. For McConaughey, the two are interchangeable. It’s another memoir of sorts – this time, a portrait of his faith and its impact on his everyday life. In it he addresses faith in the broadest sense. There’s plenty of talking to God as he searches for the divine in himself, loads of Amens, but it’s also about faith in himself, his family, his career, the world, the works.
The gospel according to Matthew advocates a world of relentless positivity that rejects the concepts of hate or “can’t”; a world of conservative discipline and traditional family values. But of course, this being McConaughey, it’s also a creed in permanent tension with earthly delights and soiled realities, where he misses his own birthday party because he’s so stoned that he sits in his car listening to a Janet Jackson song 32 times in a row, where his God-fearing parents beat the living crap out of each other, and his dad shags himself to death one early morning at the age of 62. As a rounded philosophy, I can’t pretend to make sense of it all. I’m not sure that McConaughey does, but he has a good go.
