Matthew McConaughey has lived a lot of lives. He first got famous as a stoned and sleazy philosopher, then spent nearly a decade falling in love with some of the big screen’s most formidable women. He became a McConaissance-era stockbroker, a strip club owner, and a true detective. A few years ago, McConaughey took a spin as the bongo-playing life coach version of himself; this fall, he will drive a lost bus through a California wildfire. In real life, McConaughey is also a bestselling author. The actor’s revealing 2020 memoir, Greenlights, sold more than 6 million copies, and the hardcover coasted on the New York Times bestseller list for 99 weeks. Last year, he teased a run for Texas governor.
“Poems & Prayers” by Matthew McConaughey
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In nebulous ways, McConaughey’s new book—Poems & Prayers (Crown), out today—encompasses all of these multitudes. It comprises a lifetime of aphorisms and proverbs, poetry and prayers, and is filtered through the lens of personal experience. McConaughey wrote “Heartline” when he was mulling a move away from making box office hits. He writes that “Deuces,” a ditty about searching for and finding a porta-potty, was “written in real time.”
“I love this stuff, pursuit of divinity and knowing our own self,” McConaughey tells VF in late August. “What better person to get to know?” As well as he knows himself, though, there are still aspects of McConaughey that he’s keeping close to the vest. When I ask whether he’s still thinking of running for governor, or anything else, the Oscar winner displays a politician’s artful dodge: “I will continue to have that as an understandable aim in the category,” he says.
Vanity Fair: What are the ways that you have found, as you write in the book, to “stave off the cynic’s disease and still remain a hopeful skeptic”?
Matthew McConaughey: It’s really the reason that I wrote the book. I noticed myself becoming cynical. In people, leaders, in reality—even myself—not believing in them, and us, as much as I want to. We all go from innocence to naivete to skepticism, and then some of us make that leap into what I think is a horrible disease: cynicism. It’s a cop-out. I noticed it creeping into my own consciousness, and I was like, “Whoa, uh-uh. I got to stave this off.”
You close your poem “Certainty” with the line, “Others deserve a chance to belong, especially my wife.” When did you write that poem, and what did that line mean to you then?
I wrote it a couple years ago, because she had been reminding me—I’m big on redefining selfishness. I believe that true selfishness is actually the most selfless thing we can do. There’s a place where what’s best for us is actually what’s best for the most amount of people. In defining that and always trying to work on how to better understand that philosophy, I noticed there is a difference—from her going, “Hey, don’t mistake your selfishness for certainty.”
It reminds me of this quote I heard from the director Mark Waters. We were having an argument about a scene, and I didn’t want to do this one thing that he wanted to do. He finally goes, “Okay, that’s fine.” He goes, “You know what, McConaughey? You’re seldom wrong, but there’s more than one way to be right.” I’m like, “Oh, touché. You got me.”
I don’t think she’s read that one yet. I think she’ll get a kick out of that one. She’ll go, “Oh, I remember. I bet you I know when you wrote this.”
She hasn’t read the full book yet?
Well, I don’t know if she has. She may tell me afterwards she has. She’s been pretty mum about it. She’s read some and likes quite a few, but she hasn’t brought that one up. I think it’s a side of me that she’d be glad I’m sharing. Poems and prayers are almost the opposite of certainty. I can be very academic and pragmatic and practical. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but that can be exhausting. Not only for ourselves, but others. It’s like, “Hey, come on, man. Take the rough edges off a little bit. We’re jiving here.”
What was making you feel cynical?
The world, the news, the amount of sirens I’m hearing going by. The amount of times I was seeing people, adults, mothers, fathers, thinking it was fine to just be completely irresponsible and almost bad examples for their kids, and thinking that was just fine and be like, “They’ll be fine.”
Irresponsible in what way?
“Hey, win at all costs, no rules to this game called life, just win, lie, cheat, steal and if they’re trying to score on it, move the goalpost while the ball’s in the air, it’s fine.”
Hey, what? Hang on a minute. “If you get yours, however you can git it, takin’ the shortcut, you win in life.” No. I’m not ready to purchase that for myself, for us, or as a thing to be teaching our children.
You have a section in the book called “Man Up,” and several of the poems address questions of what it means to be a good man. There are a lot of conversations, from all directions, about a so-called crisis of masculinity in America. What do you think of that?
I think there’s a crisis of masculinity. I think there’s a crisis of femininity. I think there’s a crisis of humanity. I know I’ve talked to many young men that don’t have a bearing, don’t have a compass, don’t have a North Star that they’re looking toward with how to act, treat others and themselves, how to treat friendships, how to treat relationships, expectations on themselves—going through things very sloppily.
They’re going, “What’s the reward if I do it well? What’s the reward for being a character-filled man?” Let’s talk about that. There is reward for that. And on the sexual topic, a really wonderful thing—it’s really, really good for women to have more good men.
The book engages with your own religion, spirituality, and faith. How has your relationship with religion evolved over the years, and how would you describe it now?
I was raised Methodist, which is baseline gratitude. Be thankful for what you have. It’s an affirmation and an expansion of thanks. It’s not a lot of fire and brimstone and “you better not or you’re going to burn.” No. Sunday’s a day for humility. Count your thanks.
As I’ve left, I’ve traveled the world, spent a lot of time in Africa, I have a lot of Muslim friends, I have Hindu friends, a lot of Jewish friends. I started to, as many people do, buck against—wait a minute. Can we have the religion and belief without exclusivity? What about all the people that may not believe that Jesus Christ is the only son of God? You tell me they’re going to hell? I’m not ready to purchase that, and I don’t believe that—if there is a hell. Or that if you do, that’s the only way to get to heaven, if there is a heaven. At the same time, the term that came in to placate the word religion was “spirituality.” I don’t mind it, but I think it’s not going as far as some people actually think. I think a lot more people are religious, and they don’t even know it.
You’ve spoken about the fact that you have peers in Hollywood who you know to be religious, but they’re reluctant to have that be part of their public selves. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s changing?
I think it’s just job preservation. I think it’s just, don’t take a chance to be seen applauding or saying an amen or whatever it might be. There’s an agnosticism in Hollywood. Also, I think it’s inherently politically stereotyped as a “red” virtue or a “red” belief, and even to the extent of the more extreme, to be a foolish belief.
I think it’s opened up a little bit, but I haven’t seen it really change. I think it’s on the table as an option without such fear. I think it’s not idiosyncratic with being an artist in Hollywood as much. It’s not an antithesis. I never think it should have been, and I hope for those that do believe that they would be able to wear that openly. I have plenty of agnostic and atheist friends. I have dinner with them. I’ve prayed with them.
“Some of my best friends are atheists!”
I mean, I’ve got guys and girls that are that way. And they have a wonderful moral code. I am like, bravo: believe in that. Double down on that. Believe in virtue. If we’re non-tyrants, we believe that we can be on a higher ground than we’re on now, believing in God or not. Please double down on that. We need more of that.
You have a poem that begins, “I’m not a fan of fairy tale liberal commentary, nor the right wing dictate Semper Fi,” and you’ve described yourself as aggressively centrist. Is that a difficult stance to take these days?
No! Oh, man. I mean, the video and the C-rate actors and the sound effects—you watch the exact same coverage on the exact same incident on MSNBC and Fox. And either one you’re on, you’re like, “Wow, I feel this way.” Then you go to the other and you’re like, “Whoa, I feel…” That’s why I read news. I don’t want the video. I don’t want the drama. I don’t want the acting. I don’t want the innuendo. I don’t want the snark. I just want the facts. Let me read the words and maybe even put my own commas in where I want to.
Are you still considering running for governor or any other elected office?
The idea of leadership in the political spectrum, it’s been on my mind for quite a few years now. It’s been so far, and will continue to be, a really good exercise of conscience. Politics is not inherently my language. I’m a poet, philosopher, artist. I’m peddling belief. You could say that’s not politics, but it’s also—I think, hopefully—above politics and in a place that’s accessible for either side and all sides.
What do you think it would take to tip you over to be like, “Okay, now is the time that I’m going to do it?”
I’ll keep looking at it and I’ll keep listening to it and I’m open to the pull, but I think if it will happen, I’ll look up and I’ll not be able to not do it.
Right now, my reasoning is it’s hard to win the fair fights. On inception, the political sphere, it’s an unfair fight. I’m trying to finish the best I can, doing the one thing that I’ve always known I wanted to be: a father. And do my best to have three children leave this house as individuals. That’s not my only job; I can’t stop there. But I know that anytime I’m concentrating on that as a father, I’m in the black.
You end the book with “Just keep livin’,” which is the name of your foundation, but also originally a David Wooderson quote from Dazed and Confused.
Originally, before that, it spiritually came to me to deal with my father’s death.
Do you think that his death coinciding with the new aspect of your life as an actor is why that character, and some of the lines from that movie, have stuck with you the way that they have?
”Alright, alright, alright” are the first three words I ever said on film. I’m not even on camera. It’s a wide shot at the car above. First three words I ever said, on the first night I ever worked in a film, improvising a scene that wasn’t written—thinking that this summer of ’92 in Austin, I might work a couple days on a movie and look back and go, “You remember that time, that hobby?” And it’s turned out to be a career.
That “just keep livin’” came out of my mouth the day I came back to work after my father’s wake. Richard Linklater, the director, and I, we’re walking around the stadium at magic hour, and it just came out after an hour of talking. I was like, “I think it’s just about, you got to keep the spirit alive, man. You just got to just keep livin’.” And then that night in the scene, it came out and seemed apropos. And maybe the back of my mind, or heart and soul, was like, “Let’s fortify this so it can outlive me.”
Do you have favorite poems that you always return to?
Not really. Keats, Rumi. Philosophy’s quite a bit of poetry to me. I write; my poems are my prayers are my poems. I pick up some Emerson on self-reliance, and one paragraph in, I have to set them down and go, “Whoa, take that poem with you for a week or two.” Lord Byron was very important at a time in my life when I was trying to figure some things out.
You did the Art of Living seminar. You’re moving into what feels like more of a thought leader, self-help space. Do you feel comfortable there?
In some ways, you could say some of my stuff is in the self-help space, yeah. I don’t think that’s what it really is. It can be helpful for the self, but that area, it mathematically adds up. I love aphorisms and things like that, but I think that what I’m writing hopefully is posing questions, problems, struggles, and possible ways out. Hopefully, a reader and a person can go, “Oh, I can tell my story in that.”
I wish we’d all be more selfish in that way. May I be selfish enough? May I hear myself enough to listen to others? May I convict myself enough to judge others? That’s the selfishness I’m talking about. I do not exhaust of working on these things, sharing them, letting them ride, laughing at them, enjoying them. I’m like, man, there we go. Now we’re talking. This is life? Just keep livin’. This is just what we’re all doing, trying to make it through this thing.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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