Matthew McConaughey: «I make my own track»

He pours us a glass of red wine, which is so similar to the Matthew McConaughey we knew before — a merry fellow, an object of dreams of Hollywood maidens and divas, a participant in various «wedding commotions». And what doesn’t really fit with the current McConaughey – a tragic eccentric, a personality deepened by experienced Euripidean dramas, a miserable genius from True Detective (dir. Nick Pizzolatto, 2014) and a doomed enthusiast from Dallas Buyers Club (dir. Jean- Mark Valle, 2013).

But the hedonistic filling of glasses is not in dissonance with the stage of life at which my vis-a-vis is. And he is in the phase of fullness of being. He has a full bowl of everything: here is a family with three children, and a house, and a Golden Globe and an Oscar, and inspiration. He calls it «catching all the green traffic lights.» And yes — he caught and now has the right to fill glasses with black Texas wine, wink at me with a blue eye, speak out about Californian wine, «doubtful, like everything in California, including Hollywood,» and lean back in his chair.

And Matthew McConaughey leans back in his chair in his Austin Texas home, white as the owner’s favorite shirts, perched above the Colorado River, the purest colonial style. The design is dominated by walnut, the guest is offered a chaise longue with surprisingly radiant silk upholstery. Between us stands an exquisite table, all elegantly curved.

This Texas luxury makes me laugh a little, I feel like a secondary hero of Mine Reed. But the one who, on the contrary, was born to be the main character — such are his becoming, his posture, his loud voice, sometimes turning into a conspiratorial whisper, his clearly sculpted chin, the look of his blue eyes. He was born to be a ladies’ favorite, an object of male envy, an example to follow…

But McConaughey behaves differently. He behaves in his own way. Not familiarly, but simply brotherly. He does not give interviews, but talks, he does not answer questions, but shares his knowledge and his understanding of the world. He doesn’t even treat me to this fine thick wine, but he seems to be drinking a bottle or two with a new friend.

For him, there seems to be no bonus boom around his roles, magazine covers, reviews, complimentary questions from critics, how he decided to turn from a sweet and smooth rom-com hero into the greatest, perhaps tragic actor today, into the new Paul Newman … He lives as if outside of everything this, not obeying the usual grammar of life and according to the laws of its own syntax.

Psychologies: Look, it’s still interesting to understand what a man who was once arrested for playing drums at a bar in the nude did to himself in order to now become a «true detective»? What happened to the rom-com guy to appear on Dallas Buyers Club? Why so much self-irony in The Wolf of Wall Street and determination as an elderly stripper in Magic Mike? You have experienced such a transformation — does it mean that you yourself have changed?

Matthew McConaughey: I didn’t think anyone else would remember that ’99 drum roll of mine! In a way, thanks! But this is an illusion — that something must happen to a person in order for him to become different. Nothing should happen. Isn’t it natural that only someone who could climb on that bar bare naked is capable of at least trying to become radically different?

In general, I live by two rules. First… You know, the best advice comes from people you don’t expect advice from. Here is one man, a hairdresser, an old hairdresser, once cut my hair, told me something and said in passing that he always listens to «his cricket.» Then I missed the phrase past my ears — too poetic. But she somehow sunk into me. I remembered her much later. Listen to my cricket… And I listen. I do what feels right to me.

The second rule, it’s from the movie. My first notable role was in Dazed and Confused. This is 1993. And in it, my hero says: “Just keep living” (“Just keep living”). You know, over time, I came to the conclusion that this is the best creed. You just have to keep living. And then you will understand how to live. No violence, just keep going. Live and see. Because life, it… You see, it never puts an end to it.

Life, for me, is just a sequence of phrases separated by… no, connected by commas. And there is no “or” in it, but only “and” and “and also”. Circular movement, turns, turns. And no «bricks». One door closes, another opens. But sometimes you need to stop and think about the map — where is the turn. I did.

You can only understand yourself when you are alone. I didn’t know what I wanted to be after school. I was 18 and there was fog ahead. And I just went to Australia for a year. On the exchange of graduates. No friends, no advice from mom and dad — they are not around. And you will know yourself and your desires.

I did the same in 1997. After A Time to Kill, I realized that I was slipping, that I was not where I should be. I dropped everything and went to Peru. Did not do anything. Traveled. Went. In the mountain village, I watched the children for hours. Drinking in bars. He grabbed some kind of infection, a terrible diarrhea that attacks a white man in the Latin American outback, he is also wittily called «Montezuma’s revenge.» It’s funny, but it was a cleansing.

Between the ninth and thirteenth day in Peru, I realized that I could return. Because I realized that I had become different, ceased to be the one who could live that life — agreeing to roles from the feeling that I was lucky. Or friendship, because it’s offered. Or a bed. Supply does not necessarily match demand. My demand was different. I already wanted to lay the track myself. The same thing happened a few years ago. I felt the need for a new track.

But you will not argue with the fact that new circumstances are pushing us into a new rut?

I won’t. But I won’t say that either. Over the years, I became … more selfish, more selfish, or something. I have always hated even these words themselves — «self-confidence», «selfishness». But without a share of self-love you will not remain yourself. I no longer accept roles — in movies or in someone’s life — simply because I was chosen. That is, I still beat the drum, but already in my own drum. And this definitely happened to me. I sort of stopped asking permission to enter. Stopped knocking. I just got in.

But yes — one way or another it coincided with the fact that our first child was growing up, we were waiting for the second … To all life, except family, then I would apply the word «plateau». Went up, came to a plateau. It turned out that there is no top. There is no highest point, you push on the plane. But I knew that «above» — ​​it is. Other roles, other meanings.

The fact is that in my personal life I experienced ascent, rise, construction. And in the cinema — a comfortable lull, movement along the plateau, and even on the rails. It was a clear, painful dissonance. But it was then — from the personal ascent that I was experiencing — that I became more confident, self-confident. You become more self-confident when you start a family. After all, children … They cannot live without the firm feeling that their parents are an indestructible wall. You have to start feeling like that wall. That is why I was able to undress decisively and become a charming stripper predator in Magic Mike — I taught myself a new sense of self. self-confidence.

That is, you resolutely cut off the past? After becoming the one who played Magic Mike, did you reject the one who shone in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?

Yes, I just talked about commas! You can’t even imagine how grateful I am to the life that had rom-coms! What beauty checks, with what perfect zeros I received! But I’m talking about development. About movement. The past is in the past, but it does not end. I am who I am because of who I was.

You say that for children it is necessary to become a wall that would protect them. But aren’t you protecting them from life itself?

You know what… Wall is the wrong word. The correct one is rock. You have to be a rock that they — and they know it — can always hide behind. In early childhood, they should simply live under a rock against which all the attacks of life break. And then pebbles should break off from this rock, opening up more and more sky for them, more and more living space … The parental rock should not become an obstacle for the child. Should not obscure life from him.

My parents… Oh, they are amazing people. They got divorced twice! Two! And reunited twice! And I, the youngest of their three sons, did not even know that they were getting divorced. Every time I thought that my mother went on a long vacation. That she’s delayed. And then my mother came back and said that she was living with her aunt, because her aunt needed some kind of support for some reason. And if my parents had not remarried, but remained divorced, I would still have grown up with a sense of the inviolability of my world. You see, they were the rock that protected me. Under all circumstances.

Do you think they were right to lie?

I’m sure they didn’t lie. They just didn’t destroy the truth. And then … They loved each other. Even when they got divorced, they knew that they loved. This was the truth that I felt. This was the truth that kept my world at that time.

Has the story about parental divorce somehow influenced your attitude to love, to family? After all, you entered into a legal marriage when you already had two children growing up …

No, we just didn’t want to fix what wasn’t broken. Why get married if we’re already together? So then it was thought. It seemed to me much more important that we had a common home. That is 50% common. I had a beautiful house in Malibu, and when Camila (Camila Alves, wife of McConaughey. — Approx. ed.) settled in it, she said: let everything remain as it is, I like it. And she didn’t shy away, I know. But it seemed wrong to me that she lived in my house. We were supposed to live in our house. In a house where exactly 50% is from her and exactly XNUMX% is from me. Everything should be equal in common life. For me, this is a family, not a marriage certificate.

But not only that, of course. For example, it seems to me important that we are always together. No business trips, no filming for her without me and for me without her. Children are sometimes with us, sometimes not — the school is still, but we are always together. I believe that if people part for a while, then they can part forever. Then why tempt fate?

But is it not love that keeps people close? If, say, she is no longer there, will joint trips help?

You ask like a young romantic. Yes, first you fall in love, and then you realize that you have found your soulmate… and your whole life turns into a journey together! You are following the same route. Which does not suggest that one of the two may also have their own. It is important for me not to part, to be together and to please each other. And each tries to deal with what the other desperately dislikes. That is, marriage … it’s like friendship — you try not to cause trouble to a friend. And do something nice together.

Let’s say on Saturdays my kids and I cook breakfast together. And then we go back to bed with him to talk. And these breakfasts for me are the most pleasant thing in the so-called upbringing. In my opinion, this is the best education — when we feel: we are really together, our lives are inseparable. And I really think that mutual tolerance and devotion is sexy. This is what distinguishes marriage from friendship.

What makes marriage different from romance for you? After all, you had relationships with amazing — the envy of the entire male population of the planet — women — with Penelope Cruz, Ashley Judd, Sandra Bullock …

Yes, with amazing women … You know, I celebrated half my life — having fun, dancing on bar counters … And these women were a holiday. The natural celebration of life. Penelope and I did Sahara together, an oriental western, action, hot air, passion. But our relationship was purely comradely. But after filming, something began to develop and it turned out that we were in love with each other. There are people who love to create circumstances, and I was … a slave to naturalness, progression.

Everything that developed had to develop itself. And I was comfortable when things worked out so … non-violently. You know, I love trailers, I love traveling in a trailer, I have several of them, and I really love trailer parks, these amazing inhabitants of them … Fortune tellers, magicians, old hippies, desperate yuppies, men without a profession, but with a will to live, women with kids used to surviving on a dollar a day…

So, after living in trailer parks, I learned the «trailer park rule.» If the door is closed, don’t even knock — they don’t want to see anyone there. And when the door is open, it means that the owners are happy with the guests, they want society, although they don’t invite them on purpose — they don’t bother anyone. For many years I lived by this principle — what happens, let it happen. And knocking on a closed door is pointless … But then it turned out that it was important for me to have a common life route with a person. And all the beautiful women with whom I developed relationships had their own route in life, which did not coincide with mine. Which has nothing to do with feelings. But at some point it makes them impossible for me.

And now you have clearly ceased to be a “slave of naturalness” and are making sharp turns …

I just discovered a new rule for myself: if you want something done, do it yourself. But I play the same drums. Now I just close the windows.

Three of his ambiguous addictions

A person who overnight (in the eyes of the viewer) changed his role and even his appearance, who refused to exploit his extraordinary charming appearance in order to charm with meaning and talent, can hardly be devoid of cute weaknesses. Yes, and not very cute — depending on which side to look at these weaknesses.

Ice. “If you look at me through the eyes of my wife Camila,” McConaughey admits, “I don’t know how she doesn’t twitch every time I chew the ice left at the bottom of the glass with pleasure. Childhood trauma — I grew up in places where temperatures below zero could only be bought for money or made by myself.

Tobacco. Behind McConaughey’s weakness for chewing tobacco, journalists see the depths of the culture of the southern states. And when a Texan sticks a Skoal tile behind his cheek, no one wonders how he managed to keep such flawless teeth. Because for three centuries there is nothing more natural than a real southerner with a Skoal on his cheek.

Non-Tobacco. But McConaughey, a family man and sports lover, has a much more complicated attitude towards ordinary tobacco. To the question of irreconcilable tobaccoophobes, and if he smokes too much in the television series True Detective, the artist answered with adequate malice: “Yes, I do smoke. Just not tobacco.