Matthew McConaughey came clean about the dramatic way he “grounds” himself.
McConaughey revealed on the No Magic Pill podcast that he “clicks out” of Hollywood and goes by a different name to “reaffirm his identity.” One such trip was a 22-day self-imposed exile in Peru, where he lived in the jungle and went by “Matteo.”
“I needed to get my feet on the ground,” he explained. “So, I click out. Boom. Go to Peru. I needed to find it, to check the validation. I knew I had it, I just had to go prove it again.”
The Oscar winner said he left for the first of many soul-searching trips after his first leading role in 1996’s A Time to Kill made him a household name. The newfound fame and wealth left him “trying to decipher which part’s real” and “which part’s bulls--t.”
“No strangers do I meet anymore. The world is a mirror,” he said. “Everybody ‘loves me,’ and I’m going, ‘I only said that to four people in my life, man.’”
The first 12 days of the trip were “wonky,” the actor said, noting that he oddly often settles into his trips on the twelfth day. “When you get famous, what happens is there’s a few just salutations that are skipped.”
“One thing I needed was the people I met in Peru, who only knew me as Matteo. Not of a movie I had done or anything,” he said. “And at the end of 22 days, the tears in their eyes and the tears in my eyes and the hugs we had on the sadness and happiness of saying goodbye were all based off of the man they met named Matteo, who had nothing to do with the celebrity.”
“It reaffirmed my own identity that, ‘Oh, I still got it. This is based on me.’”
McConaughey, who shares three children with his wife, Camila Alves: Levi, 17, Vida, 16, and Livingston, 13, ventured into the desert alone, where he lived without electricity while writing his 2025 poetry book, Poems & Prayers.
“I packed all my diaries away along with my steaks, water, and tequila, and went to a place that had no electricity in the middle of the desert where I was locked in with nothing but me and who I’ve been in my past diaries,” the Wolf of Wall Street star said.
“I learned from previous trips that there’s an initiation period when we go away with ourselves where the demons on our back are dancing and having a good time at our expense,” he continued. “The shame can get heavy. And I know for me, I do not enjoy my own company for a little while when I go off on these trips.”
After landing his breakthrough role in 1993’s Dazed and Confused, McConaughey, 56, rose to stardom through his numerous leading roles in romantic comedies like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Fed up with being typecast as a rom-com actor, McConaughey quit acting for two years to shed the stigma before he became one of Hollywood’s leading dramatic actors. He earned an Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club in 2014.
