Matthew McConaughey’s new memoir Greenlights is an unconventional look at his childhood and career – which explains why he finally married wife Camila Alves
At 50, the Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar star opens up about his father’s death, his relationship with Brazilian model wife Camila Alves, and how life is really just a series of traffic lights – oh, and he’s made an audiobook version, too
No one knows Matthew McConaughey like Matthew McConaughey. But now, the world has the chance to know him as he knows himself thanks to Greenlights, the actor’s love letter to life that hit shelves this October.
The Oscar winner didn’t aim to write a memoir, though the book has many of the same elements and is told chronologically, with a narrative backstory following the 50 years of his life so far.
Like its author, the book has come a long way – and hasn’t, at the same time. McConaughey initially planned to use a ghostwriter, a journalist who he had worked with in the past, but the arrangement fell through.
“When he got off the project, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do this,’” McConaughey explained, noting that he had to let go of any preconceived notions of what the book would be as he went through his journals. He originally thought the project would be a back-pocket book that could be pulled out for “wisdom bombs”, but it morphed into much more.
McConaughey’s own story is arguably more interesting than any character he has embodied on the silver screen over the decades. And he didn’t write it because he is a celebrity, he explains.
“I remember writing this down: ‘The words on this page need to be worthy of being signed by anonymous, but also be words that only I could have written,’” he says. “And that was sort of my North Star of what I wanted it to be.”