Welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
-It's really good to have you. -It's good to be here.
Like I was saying, I'm surprised we haven't done this before,
but, um, I'm glad to be here now and looking forward to it.
Well, I'm-I'm a huge fan of yours,
and I-I've loved, uh, enjoying all of your work,
some of it again, during this period.
You know, you-you've released a book called Greenlights,
and it feels like it's a memoir,
but in some parts, it feels like a...
It's not a self-help book,
but it's like a book of life lessons,
if I can call it that.
Talk me through a little bit about, like,
why you chose to write the book now
and why you decided to release so many snippets
that you've written about your life.
From, I think, what, the age of 14
-is all your journal entries? -Yeah.
Yeah, I started writing, keeping journals 36 years ago.
You know, like most people, went to the journal,
went to the diary when I was in times of loss or confusion.
You know, "So-and-so broke up with me.
My heart's hurt. Why I got pimples on my face?"
All this stuff.
And then, you know, in the early 20s,
started to find a little groove in life.
Found my frequency a little bit. Was doing good in school,
had a job, social relationships were-were successful.
I was catching proverbial green lights.
And I remember telling myself at that time,
"Hey, make sure you're still writing in that damn diary now
"when things are going good,
"because when you get in a rut again,
"you might want to be able to look back
and see what your habits were."
And that actually proved to be true.
-So, maybe it was coming across 50 years old. -Mm-hmm.
And I started off two years
or three years ago with a ghostwriter.
That person fell off the project,
which was the greatest blessing.
That's when I said, "Okay, you got to go do it."
That's when my wife said, "Get out of here.
-Go see what you got." -(laughs)
And, you know, it's a bit intimidating.
I'm not a nostalgic guy.
I don't really like looking back,
so I thought I was gonna be embarrassed
and ashamed about a lot of stuff,
and there was some stuff I was embarrassed and ashamed about,
but most of the embarrassment I laughed at.
Most of the shame I forgave myself for.
It ended up being the best time I ever had
with-with myself and my past.
I-I think there may have been moments of embarrassment,
but there are so many things where I went like,
"Oh, yeah, I've-I've lived through that."
One of the stories I related to more than any--
I mean, not because of the ending--
was just having the acne that was to the point
where it was gonna scar your face.
It's just a journey of how your mom was selling oil of mink,
-and you had to... -Yeah.
You tried to use it to get rid of your acne,
which then meant that you had,
like, one of the biggest breakup...
like, breakouts that you ever had.
-But just tell us a little bit of that story. -Heavily...
So, Mom starts selling
this oil of mink door-to-door.
And it says... Their one-liner is,
"If you apply this to your face,
"it'll bring out all the impurities,
"but after the impurities are gone,
"you're gonna have wonderful, glowing skin
for the rest of your life."
Well, I'm 15. I got a few pimples.
Say, "What about this?"
My mom's like, "You should use the oil of mink."
So I start putting it on religiously every single night.
Well, what happens? You start to get more pimples.
Three weeks in, keep putting it on.
Now it's full-blown acne.
My whole face and head swollen. I'm scared.
-(laughs) -I talked to a dermatologist,
and he goes, "What are you putting on your face?"
I show him the oil of mink. He says, "No!
"That's for people, like, over 35,
"not you going through puberty
"where your-your pores are already secreting oil.
"They're all blocked. You're two weeks away
"from having ice pick holes in your cheeks.
"We got to get off this
"and get you on this stuff called Accutane,
which'll clear it up."
I'm like, "Okay, whatever, whatever, whatever."
Well, around this time, my dad gets the bright idea
of, like, "You know what, son?
"I mean, that oil of mink your mom put on you
"doesn't have a disclaimer saying kids shouldn't wear it.
"You got all these pimples. I mean, we're gonna sue them.
Let's get 50,000 bucks out of this thing."
-(laughs) -So, he goes to the lawyer and takes me with him.
And I remember this lawyer sitting over there going like,
"Oh, geez. Yeah, you look like shit, Matthew.
"You don't even look like yourself. I mean, geez.
"The physical part's bad,
but you must have had a lot of emotional distress."
And I saw his eyes kind of raise,
like going, "Right? Right?"
(laughs): I'm like, "Yes, emotional distress."
And then he looks at my dad. He goes, "We can make 35 grand
on emotional distress off this easy."
-Right? So, here we go. -(laughs)
As you know, depositions in law-law, um...
uh, law cases take a while.
A year and a half later, I'm back now
with the deposition for the defense, all right?
The Accutane has worked. I've cleared up.
And I'm sitting across the table from the prosecutor.
And he goes, uh, "Gosh dog. Look at you.
"Look at these pictures of you back then.
"I mean, you didn't even look like yourself.
You must have been so emotionally distressed."
And I'm like, "This guy is just handing me a softball."
I'm like, "Yes." And he's like, "Must not be...
How'd it go with the girls?"
I go, "No, horrible. Horrible.
"I mean, confidence dropped.
I lost all the girls, didn't want to hang."
"Oh, my God, must have been so bad, so bad.
Just scarred you for life, huh?" And I'm like, "Yes, sir."
I'm going, "This is a poor prosecution, man."
All of a sudden, he reaches under the table,
and he pulls out this yearbook,
but a page was marked on it.
And he puts it on the table in front of me,
slides it over and opens it up
and points to it and said, "Who's that?"
And it was a picture of me from that year,
-a year after the acne, right? -Right.
It was me and Camissa Springs.
On her sash, it said "Most Beautiful."
On my sash, it said "Most Handsome."
-(laughs) -And just as I saw that, I knew in my mind, "No!"
And he goes, "Yeah.
So emotionally distressful, hadn't it been?"
And I went, "Damn it! We lost the case."
-(laughs) -And sure enough, that blew the case.
And then my dad went on for months going,
"Gosh damn it, son, we all...
"We could have made $50,000,
"then you got to run off and win Most Handsome?
What the hell?"
(both laugh)
You-you blew the case, but I feel like,
you know, that-that was, in my opinion,
like, just one of the jumping-off points
for the life of Matthew McConaughey.
Yeah, people go like, "Sexiest Man Alive and good-looking guy,"
but it's also, like, down-to-earth,
you know, having crazy experiences,
and that-that's what this book really, really feels like to me.
When you look at all the stories that you're sharing in the book
and the title Greenlights,
what do you think you're trying to share with us as the reader?
That when I look back
at my last 50 years,
um, I noticed a lot of red and yellow lights.
I've had my crisises. My father died.
I had a year abroad where I was completely lost
and losing my mind.
Um, I noticed that there were times,
sometimes in the moment of the crisis,
sometimes soon after it, sometimes years after it,
that I saw there was a lesson to be learned
-from that red and yellow light time in my life. -Mm-hmm.
A lot of times, it was the way I looked at the situation.
Um, I call the-the... sort of the tool that I've used
is when faced with the inevitable,
how do you get relative with the situation?
Once you know it's inevitable, do you endure?
Do you keep enduring? Do you pivot?
Or do you wave the white flag and go, "I'm moving on?"
All three of those are means to getting to a green light.
I found that most everything has turned into a green light
or revealed its green light assets.
Every yellow and red light has revealed assets.
For instance, we look at COVID times right now.
Major red light in our life.
I truly believe that we...
that this will reveal green light assets in our future.
I know, personally, for me,
as much as an awkward and tragic year as it's been,
I've gotten closer with my mother.
She's gotten closer with her grandkids.
-Mm. -I'm spending more family time.
I'm with the damn dog longer. I'm reading more.
I'm trying to find the assets in it, right?
And that's not denying.
Greenlights is not a delusionally optimistic thing
of like, "No, just see the glass half full."
No, bullshit. This is not kumbaya.
It's like, once it's inevitable, how can I see the assets
and double down on them without denying the crisis?
And that's when I talk about even humor in this thing.
Humor does not deny a crisis.
-Right. -It just opens it up to say,
"Well, now let's talk about it a little bit easier."
It can reveal the truth more.
So, that's the thing that I notice,
is sometimes, you know, it's...
We can engineer green lights in our life.
There are choices we make
that give us delayed expectations tomorrow.
Um, sometimes, we're just fortunate
and they land in our lap, and it's what we do with them.
Um, and, you know, we can...
The other thing that I... that I get from this book
is creating green lights for our self
is not exclusive of creating green lights
for others at the same time.
I love that.
You know, what-what really struck me in the book
is how you share these stories from your point of view,
and what I love is how authentic it is.
You know, people knew you as this really successful actor,
especially in the world of rom-coms.
You were the king of rom-coms. You wanted to do more.
And it seems strange to say,
but it's like, this was your challenge.
How do you give up everything that you've worked for
to try and get something
that you really believe you want for yourself?
And-and talking about that through the Dallas Buyers Club
and, like, how hard it was to make that movie
was-was quite a challenge.
Why do you think you were willing to risk it all
to get to the place that you thought you needed to be at?
It was a time when it was sort of, uh,
what I was doing was sort of grating against my soul.
I-I think I say it in the book.
I was... I was not sleeping well,
and it had nothing to do with the mattress.
Um, I was enjoying my life.
I was quite grateful for my life.
I loved the work I did. I enjoyed the rom-coms.
But at that time, I had just had...
Camila and I just had our first son.
So, you have your first son,
I mean, life is big and vital as all...
I mean, now I had more rage, more love, more joy,
laughed harder, cried harder.
The ceiling and basement of emotions
and how much I was feeling life,
the vitality of life was immense.
Well, in romantic comedies, the ceiling and basement of emotions
are very compressed, by design. So I was saying
can my work challenge my life's vitality,
can my work challenge the character I am in my life?
Well, it wasn't, at the time, so the work that I wanted to do
that might challenge my life's vitality--
-they weren't offered. -Right.
So I decided if I can't do what I want to do
I'm gonna stop doing what I've been doing.
And then 20 months go by.
I'm gone, I'm forgotten about. I've considered other careers.
Oh, guess who just now became a new "good idea"
for some meaty dramatic roles out there?
Matthew McConaughey. Why?
Because he's been gone. Where the hell's he been?
He's unbranded. I don't know where he is.
Hasn't been in my face on rom-com, I haven't seen him
shirtless on a beach. I don't know where the hell he is.
Since I don't know where he is,
he's now maybe a new "good idea."
And that's what happened. So I held out
and, um, it was a good penance. (chuckles) A good sabbatical.
Well, I'll tell you this. Uh, I thought you were amazing
before I read the book. Uh, now I'm a bona fide fan.
Thank you for the time,
thank you for sharing your stories,
thank you for sharing your life, and, uh,
yeah, I-I hope for more green lights in your journey.
And I'm excited for the audio book.
I hope everyone reads the book,
but to hear you reading those stories...
'Cause I had to fake it. I had to sit there by myself
and be like, "Well, I was born and this is what I did."
And I tried to do my best Matthew McConaughey,
but I want to hear your voice,
so I'm excited for the audio book.
Sir, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
You are welcome. It was a pleasure to be here, Trevor.
Appreciate it.