book review greenlights by matthew mcconaughey

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Matthew McConaughey is ‘alright, alright, alright’ — and thinks you will be too

Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, “ Greenlights ,” has a way of convincing you that being Matthew McConaughey is just about the easiest thing in the world. Look at his filmography, and you’ll see an actor who gutted his way to critical and commercial success: He started with cameos and low-budget indies in the ’90s, labored in the rom-com salt mines in the early aughts, then pivoted to Oscar bait and prestige TV, finally reaching the mountaintop with a best actor Academy Award for “ Dallas Buyers Club ” in 2014.

That’s an achievement. But the man who made a meme out of Nietzsche’s notion that “time is a flat circle” isn’t going to tell a simple story about hard work and steady forward progress. By his reckoning, his fame wasn’t so much about raw ambition as much as it was with being preternaturally “alright, alright, alright” with everything, every step of the way.

Take a break from it all by heading to a monastery or RVing for three years? Perfect: “Driving the highways of America has always been my ideal office.”

Take a break from taking a break with a long debauch at the Chateau Marmont? That’s perfect, too: “I took a lot of showers in the daylight hours, rarely alone. I partook.”

Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Is This Anything?’ charts his life as a comedian, one bit at a time

Cash in for a bit and make dreck like “The Wedding Planner”? It’s all good: “I enjoyed being able to give people a ninety-minute breezy romantic getaway from the stress of their lives.”

Change course, demand juicier roles and launch the McConaissance? Gotta do you, man: “I’d been going to bed with an itchy butt, waking up with a stinky finger for long enough,” he writes, probably not plagiarizing Sir Laurence Olivier’s autobiography.

McConaughey’s self-effacing slacker-cool attitude, which lets him casually drop a few thousand on the hapless Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, has made him an ideal masculine movie hero for our anxious moment. The world is on fire, but he has got you; he’s our mindful-breathing Brando. That has made him ripe for satire — his gnomic musings in car ads practically begged for it. A great thing about “Greenlights” is that the persona never sounds like a put-on. The bad thing, though, is that he obviously wrote it himself and seems certain that in addition to being a memoirist he’s also a certified motivational speaker and, worse, a poet.

McConaughey, who will turn 51 in November, recalls growing up in rural Texas, the son of parents who married three times and divorced twice. His father was a pugnacious character. A pipe salesman and onetime draftee of the Green Bay Packers, he would recruit Matthew’s brother for a urinating contest and once whipped up a scheme to have Matthew claim emotional distress from a breakout-inducing skin cream, a ruse undone when he was presented with a photo naming him the most handsome man at his high school. Later, McConaughey’s dad would fulfill his dream of dying while having sex, and how could McConaughey not be inspired by that kind of temperament? “Yes, he called his shot all right,” McConaughey writes.

His first major film role was fittingly quirky: A chance meeting with the casting director of “ Dazed and Confused ” in a hotel bar led to him to the role of Wooderson, the 20-something still stuck on chasing high school girls. It’s where he uttered that first “alright, alright, alright” — “the very first words I said on the very first night of a job I had that I thought would be nothing but a hobby, but turned into a career.”

He’s glad that people have taken up “alright, alright, alright” as a mantra, but then McConaughey seemingly never met a mantra he didn’t like. In college, he stumbled upon “ The Greatest Salesman in the World ,” a 1968 book by the author Og Mandino, whose work is a bottomless resource for Successories posters and #MondayMotivation posts. Mandino’s ethos of positivity and persistence transformed McConaughey, which is to his credit. Alas, it also means he wants to try his hand at it, too, and “Greenlights” is stuffed with vaporous, circular proverbs for would-be McConaugheys: “All Prodigals once Pharisee, All Pharisees once Prodigal,” “I am good at what I love, I don’t love all that I’m good at,” “the arrow doesn’t seek the target, the target draws the arrow,” “I was remembered by being forgotten.”

A fortune cookie might have written much of “Greenlights,” if a fortune cookie had starred in “Interstellar.”

McConaughey’s pronouncements all feed into his core philosophy of what he calls “livin”: “There’s no ‘g’ on the end of livin because life is a verb,” he insists, which is a reasonable way to understand life, if not gerunds. Throughout “Greenlights,” the doctrine of “livin” manifests itself through aphorisms, bumper stickers and poetry, the last of which is uniformly cringeworthy. He makes no grand claims to literary greatness, but that hardly removes the sting of bad puns (“Fish for yourself. / Self-ish.”), Dr. Seuss-isms (“I swallow vitamins with a beer I do, / chew more tobacco than I ought to”) or poems where the title alone should put you off reading further (“Today I Made Love to My Woman”).

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Be it through memoir or Instapoetry, McConaughey pushes an ethos of learning to take your hands off the wheel. The “Greenlights” of the title refers to moments when the universe gives us permission to do new things; reds and yellows are the things that stand in our way. McConaughey has obviously navigated this successfully, but his wisdom isn’t exactly transferrable. Might I, too, refuse lucrative romantic lead roles till better scripts come along? Or hike through a rainforest on Ecstasy and float naked on the Amazon River because an erotic-dream-slash-nightmare told me to?

Following the lead of his first connection in Hollywood, who told McConaughey he would get the work he wants when he stopped wanting it so much, McConaughey’s most cherished advice is non-advice. “I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan,” he writes. “Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s part of the plan.” Some plan.

But the McConaughey effect is that you can’t be too annoyed at McConaughey — seeker, world traveler, naked bongo player turned well-meaning family man. (He’s married with three kids, another one of those good-things-happen-when-you-stop-seeking-them things.) So, on a scale of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” to “True Detective,” I figure “Greenlights” is a solid “Magic Mike” — simply structured, a little flashy, but not as insightful as it wants you to think it is. The lengthy bio at the end of “Greenlights” states that McConaughey is “a very intentional man.” But the intentions are largely a mystery to all but the man himself.

Mark Athitakis is a critic in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

GREENLIGHTS

By Matthew McConaughey

Crown. 304 pp. $30

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New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

GREENLIGHTS

by Matthew McConaughey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2020

A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.

All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.

“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright —of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused , to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Matthew McConaughey illustrated by Renée Kurilla

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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Book: Tim Allen Exposed Himself to Pamela Anderson

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Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey

In his memoir, “Greenlights,” the star of “Dazed and Confused” and “Dallas Buyers Club” shares lessons from a life in which he turned out all right, all right, all right.

Matthew McConaughey knows there are people who think, “Gosh dang, McConaughey just eases right into everything.” He said he wrote “Greenlights” partly as a corrective. Credit... Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times

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By Dave Itzkoff

Oct. 14, 2020

Would it surprise you to learn that more than 30 years ago, before he’d even sauntered across the screen in “Dazed and Confused,” Matthew McConaughey wrote a poem in which he vowed he’d someday become an author?

As one of its lopsided verses declared:

I think I’ll write a book. A word about my life. I wonder who would give a damn About the pleasures and the strife?

This was in 1989, when he didn’t know all the twists and turns that awaited him — the acting awards he’d win, the wife and children he’d have, the bracing dramas and banal rom-coms he’d make. But he was certain he would live a life worth chronicling.

Now that poem, rendered in its creator’s arcane handwriting, appears at the start of his autobiography, “Greenlights,” which Crown will publish on Tuesday.

The book offers a shotgun seat to all the l-i-v-i-n that McConaughey has accumulated, from his upbringing in a tumultuous Texas family to his ascent as the ruggedly serene star of “Magic Mike,” “True Detective” and “Dallas Buyers Club.”

McConaughey, who turns 51 on Nov. 4, enjoys spinning some of these personal yarns, not necessarily because they sound cool but because he believes they reveal certain universal and teachable truths.

To that end, “Greenlights” is filled with homespun wisdom that McConaughey has wrung from his toils, travels and that time he got arrested while playing bongos in the nude . He has fortified his remembrances with the coinages and maxims he dutifully recorded in decades’ worth of personal journals and which continue to spill naturally from his mouth.

It is a book that is constantly evaluating itself and its reasons for being, much like its author. He acknowledges that he entered into the project both eagerly and warily, looking to use his celebrity for the opportunity to tell his story in his own idiosyncratic way.

“I get what equity I bring as Matthew McConaughey, however you see me,” he said in a Zoom conversation last month. He spoke from a den in his home in Austin, Texas, wearing his hair swept back and a flannel shirt that was only partly buttoned up as he peered into his webcam through a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

“If it’s a straight memoir” — he stressed the second syllable with an unexpected French flair — “as a publisher you could sell some books.” What he hoped to produce, he said, was one where “the words on the page are still worthy to share if they were signed by anonymous, but at the same time be a book that only McConaughey could’ve wrote.”

Like the bestubbled dude you have seen whooping it up at WWE matches and sermonizing in luxury car commercials, McConaughey is alternately uninhibited and self-serious. He is comfortable referring to himself in the third person and dismisses any suggestion that he has stumbled backward into his professional success.

As he told me, he knows there are people who think, “Gosh dang, McConaughey just eases right into everything — the guy doesn’t seem to have any bumps, doesn’t get hit crossing the road.” He said he wrote “Greenlights” partly as a corrective to this perception, to show how much effort it has taken to get where he is.

But McConaughey wants readers to look beyond the boldface name on its cover and focus on its fundamental message. No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.”

Codifying his beliefs and putting them down on paper was one test. The next challenge comes as McConaughey releases “Greenlights” into a world that feels increasingly unsettled and dismissive of values systems — one where, like millions of Americans, he and his family have spent the past several months spent “trying to outrun the ol’ Covid,” as he put it.

“I’m still continuously testing and updating my philosophies, practically daily,” he said. “And I can do better at a lot of them.”

As McConaughey tells the story, his youth was dominated by his father, Jim, a former college and professional football player turned pipe salesman who was married three times to and twice divorced from the actor’s mother, Kay. The book’s first chapter dramatizes a scene from 1974 where McConaughey watched the couple fight ferociously — his mother having broken his father’s nose with a telephone while he brandished a ketchup bottle — before his parents had sex on the kitchen floor.

It sounds brutal and, as McConaughey told me, “This is the reality, but there’s humanity in that reality.” Jim was tough on his sons, too, but, McConaughey, who is the youngest of three brothers, said, “I wouldn’t give back one ass-whupping I got for the values that are ingrained in me.” When he reflects on his parents, McConaughey said, “The love was real. The passion was real.” (A few days after McConaughey started filming “Dazed and Confused,” Jim died of a heart attack while making love to Kay.)

Kay McConaughey, now 88, said in an email that as she raised Matthew, she did not necessarily expect him to become an artist. “In fact, that subject was never brought up,” she said. “I thought he was going to be a lawyer.”

Even so, she said that she often observed Matthew “jotting things down on small pieces of paper about what someone had said or what he thought about what was being said or a way he saw life.”

Having read “Greenlights” and seen how Matthew depicted her relationship with Jim, Kay McConaughey said, “It was a rocky and passionate love affair we had, but I do wish Matthew would have told more of the stories about me and his dad’s love, affection and commitment to each other.”

Still, she said, she regarded her youngest son as a fundamentally forthright person. “What has remained consistent in Matthew’s life is his honesty and being true to himself, knowing who he was and owning it.”

Matthew McConaughey recounts how he landed his breakthrough role as the likable sleaze Wooderson in “Dazed and Confused” by tracking down the film’s casting director, Don Phillips, in an Austin bar and charming his way into an audition . A few years later, the not-yet-bankable actor mounted a successful campaign to persuade the director Joel Schumacher to cast him in a leading role in his adaptation of “A Time to Kill.”

To McConaughey, stories like these illustrate how he is not content to merely let life happen to him. “It’s always been obvious to me that I do not have a laissez-faire attitude,” he said. “It’s a state of being that I work at, continuously, daily, and I break a sweat to get it.”

Longtime colleagues say it’s even more than that: Despite the agreeably disheveled image that McConaughey projects, they see him as someone who is perpetually preparing himself for opportunities and actively steering himself toward them.

As his friend Richard Linklater, who directed him in several films including “Dazed and Confused,” explained to me, “People underestimate the utter intentionality of what Matthew’s done. He’s really good at going from A to B to C. He’s got a plan and he’s just brave enough and brazen enough to execute it.”

The point of the “Dazed and Confused” audition story isn’t that McConaughey simply happened to be in the right place at the right time, Linklater said: “He wasn’t discovered in a bar — he went over to the guy who he heard was casting it. Matthew’s always playing the long game.”

In “Greenlights,” McConaughey tells the back stories of some of his best-known roles, but he does not take a film-by-film inventory of his entire career. Nor does he share any particularly salacious details from his personal life when he was still a single man, beyond a paragraph in which he writes: “I wore the leathers. I rode the Thunderbird. I took a lot of showers in the daylight hours, rarely alone. I partook.”

McConaughey told me that while such scenes are generally staples of celebrity tell-alls, he felt that to include them “would be in bad taste and bad manners — that’s why bedrooms have doors on ’em.”

However, he does unhesitatingly share two different stories in which he awakens from wet dreams — you read that right — where he saw himself “floating downstream on my back in the Amazon River” while surrounded by jungle life and “African tribesmen lined up shoulder to shoulder on the ridge to the left of me.” He interpreted these visions as subconscious exhortations to travel to Peru, where he immersed himself in the Amazon, and to Mali, where he sparred with a local wrestling champion.

Sections like these shed light on the transcendental side of the author, who is a practicing Methodist but also describes himself as “an optimistic mystic,” forever fine-tuning his personal dials in search of further broadcasts from the universe.

That approach to existence has sent McConaughey hunting for what he calls “greenlights” — the traffic signals that mean go, which he prefers to spell as a single word and which he believes take skill and acumen to identify.

To conclude that life is all about luck, he said, is to surrender to fatalism: “Quit letting yourself off the hook, McConaughey. If that’s true, then run every red light. You’ve got your hands on the wheel. You’re making choices. They matter.”

McConaughey said he has no interest in being anyone’s spiritual guru and did not approach “Greenlights” as a work of self-help. Friends say that yes, this is really how he talks and that his book is one more way that he is trying to express himself.

“It’s his way of wanting to be heard on another level,” Linklater said. “It’s another level of communication that you can’t get in a role.”

Linklater explained that actors like McConaughey are vulnerable in their work: “They don’t have total control,” he said. “Even the most powerful actors — Denzel Washington, Daniel Day-Lewis — are still at the mercy of the parts they’re being offered. Actors need these other outlets.”

Sometimes McConaughey dispenses wisdom in miniature pearls, like the beloved bumper stickers he has reproduced throughout the book that sport pithy phrases like “Educate before you indict,” “I am good at what I love, I don’t love all that I’m good at” and “If you’re high enough, the sun’s always shining.”

And sometimes he expounds at greater length, like when I asked him how he appears to stay out of America’s toxic culture wars and cultivates liberal and conservative fans alike.

“I’m trying to keep in with it and not out of it,” McConaughey replied. “For those people who say there’s nothing but yellow lines and dead armadillos in the middle of the highway, I say to you this: the armadillos are just fine. Because the right and the left are so far out, they’re not even on the asphalt anymore. They’re in the frickin’ desert.”

He gave a raspy laugh and added, “Man, I’ll meet you in the middle.”

Getting “Greenlights” onto the page did not happen quite so swiftly. Crown had its eye on McConaughey as far back as 2015, when the actor went viral with a commencement speech he gave at the University of Houston , structured around his aphorisms (“Don’t leave crumbs”; “Dissect your successes”; “A roof is a man-made thing”).

A proposal that McConaughey later circulated to several publishing houses “had less story and more of the lessons and philosophy in it,” said Gillian Blake, senior vice president and editor in chief of Crown. But in further conversations with him, Blake said that McConaughey did not need much encouragement to turn a retrospective lens on himself.

“We had a few long in-person meetings where you’d ask him a question and he’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, I got a story about that,’” she said. “And then he went back home and wrote it all down.”

McConaughey said that he had already prepared for the writing process by reviewing the diaries and journals he has kept since he was a teenager. He said he did not work with a co-author on “Greenlights” but got some needed motivation from his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey.

“All of a sudden, my wife was like, ‘Get in the truck, load up your food, water and tequila, and don’t come back until you’ve got something,’” he recalled. “So, bam , I called a friend with a cabin and hit the desert.”

Since then, though, McConaughey, his wife and their three children have been living a sequestered life during what the actor calls “Covid times.” McConaughey said he is a cooperative mask-wearer and social-distancer, but he could not help worrying about reopened schools and sports events leading to a rise of infections. “We may see this completely backfire,” he said.

It is both a propitious and a terrible time to be plugging a book about how the experiences of a Hollywood movie star can improve your life. And while McConaughey has reorganized himself for several weeks’ worth of virtual promotion, his greater concerns are maintaining his family’s welfare and keeping his own head on straight.

In some moments he tried to alleviate his existential dread with humor. “Everyone’s in a bit of a pickle, and it’s not a little gherkin,” he said. “It’s one of those big two-pounders you get at a roadside truck stop.”

Then he would abruptly describe the situation in starker terms: “We’re going back to our most barbaric selves,” he said.

But — to use an adage that McConaughey might endorse — he tried to light a candle in the darkness and find some optimism at an otherwise dire time. “Could this actually be a banner year, where things got started?” he asked. “Where we got cleansed? A little evolution would be nice.”

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Dave Itzkoff is a culture reporter whose latest book, “Robin,” a biography of Robin Williams, was published in May 2018. More about Dave Itzkoff

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The Literary Edit

Greenlights Book Review

Towards the end of 2020, it seemed that almost everywhere I went someone was reading – or talking about – Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. There were people thumbing through it on the beach; dog-eared copies sat next to half-drunk cups of coffee in cafes dotted around Bondi, and nearly every time I was in Gertrude & Alice a hopeful shopper would ask if they had it in stock. And while I’m not usually one for celebrity memoirs – indeed I would struggle to tell you the last time I read one – I was intrigued as to what it was about Greenlights that seemed to be taking the reading world by storm. Knowing almost nothing about either Matthew McConaughey or his filmography (other than a long-standing hatred for the time he played an exaggerated version of himself in the Escape from New York episode of Sex and the City) I decided to make it the first book I read in 2021. And while I began the book with almost no expectations, I was soon swept away by McConaughey’s poignant and affecting ode to life.

Greenlights Book Review

Part memoir, part guide to life, part collection of extracts from diaries the actor has been keeping for decades, Greenlights by Matthew McConoughey is an insightful and intimate exploration of one southern boy’s journey to stardom. Born to ‘twice divorced and thrice married parents’, I loved reading McConoughey’s honest account of being raised in a turbulent household that was peppered by violence, love and humanity, I loved reading about the time using mink-oil as acne cream went horribly wrong, about the time a stolen pizza that led to a concussion, and about an ill-fated lawsuit that his father never forgave him for.

Interwoven within the nostalgic narrative is McConoughey’s take on life; as a self-proclaimed optimistic, he sprinkles the text with the term ‘greenlights’ – after which the memoir is named – and explains them as being “an affirmation, [and a way of] setting yourself up for success. A greenlight can be as simple as putting your coffee in the coffee filter before you go to bed so tomorrow morning all you’ve got to do is push the button.”

From the year he spent abroad as a Rotary Exchange student in Australia, to the aftermath of his father’s death, to meeting his now wife, to turning his back on the movies that made him a household name, Greenlights is a beautifully written, evocative and unique narrative provides a candid look at what went on behind the scenes of one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors.

A brilliant book to start the new year with, and one that is as inspiring as it is entertaining, I’ll end my review of Greenlights with one of my favourite quotes, “Reach beyond your grasp. Have immortal finish lines and turn your red light green because a roof is a man-made thing.”

Greenlights Summary

From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges—how to get relative with the inevitable—you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter. To life.

It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights —and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.

Matthew McConaughey Author Bio

Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey is a married man, a father of three children, and a loyal son and brother. He considers himself a storyteller by occupation, believes it’s okay to have a beer on the way to the temple, feels better with a day’s sweat on him, and is an aspiring orchestral conductor.

In 2009, Matthew and his wife, Camila, founded the just keep livin Foundation, which helps at-risk high school students make healthier mind, body, and spirit choices. In 2019, McConaughey became a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Minister of Culture/M.O.C. for the University of Texas and the City of Austin. McConaughey is also brand ambassador for Lincoln Motor Company, an owner of the Major League Soccer club Austin FC, and co-creator of his favorite bourbon on the planet, Wild Turkey Longbranch.

Book review: Candid, lively memoir from Matthew McConaughey

"Greenlights"

Author: Matthew McConaughey

Crown, 289 pages, $30

If you’re curious to know when Matthew McConaughey first used his signature phrase, “Alright, alright, alright,” you’ve come to the right book. It amuses him that people still follow him around 28 years later and say those words to him and tattoo them on their body. They were among the first words he ever said on film, as the character of Wooderson in one of his earliest movies, “Dazed and Confused.”

On track to become a lawyer, he decided a life in law courts wasn’t for him, so he traded school texts for movie scripts and started auditioning to the accompaniment of many rounds of “Sorry, no thank yous.” About switching careers, his father told him, “Well …don’t half-ass it.” He didn’t.

McConaughey’s first big movie was “A Time to Kill.” He nailed a part in the film, but he wanted the lead and only the lead. Casting took a chance with McConaughey. He read for the role of Jake Brigance and got the role. He said, “I ran off into the night until I was about a mile away from anyone. Then, with tears in my eyes. I dropped to my knees, faced that full moon, extended my right hand up to it, and said, ‘Thank you.’”

With that role his world changed. But his newfound success did not come easily. He did not know how to “Navigate the decadence of my success, much less believe it was mine to enjoy.” It was after he had been a bank teller, boat mechanic, photo processor, barrister’s assistant, construction worker and assistant golf pro that he finally signed up with a talent agency. They asked him, “You ever play baseball?” Yes, he said, he did for 12 years. Two weeks later he found himself playing baseball in “Angels in the Outfield” for 10 weeks. With only $1,200 left in the bank, he was paid $48,000.

A production company had him stay for 18 months at the ultrachic Chateau Marmont hotel in Beverly Hills, and gave him a check for $150,000 to pay the hotel bill. He was equally happy in bars, trailer camps, a jail (where he was set free for $50), and taking solo three-week-trips to Peru, floating naked on his back down the Amazon River.

Eventually he tired of doing romantic comedies, so he swore off rom-coms and turned down any script that he deemed “light fare.” But at about that time, Hollywood was starting as many productions as possible because a walkout was looming. He played the lead opposite Jennifer Lopez in “The Wedding Planner.” He followed that with the fiery role of Denton Van Zan in “Reign of Fire,” who was “a cigar-gnawing, apocalyptic, badass dragon slayer that ate the heart of every dragon he slayed.”

After being in excellent physical condition and playing “Magic Mike,” he accepted the role of Ron Woodroof in “Dallas Buyers Club.” Woodroof had Stage 4 HIV, so McConaughey had to lose considerable weight in the five months before the shooting began. Six feet tall, he weighed 182 at the time, and got down to 140 pounds on a diet of three egg whites for breakfast, 5 ounces of fish and a cup of vegetables for lunch and the same for dinner. (And as much wine as he cared to have.) And also ate a lot of ice chips.

“Greenlights” is more than an autobiography, far more than a comedy or a series of adventures. The author gives us a lively look at his life in and out of his movies and provides readers with an honest look at who he is. McConaughey wants readers to come away understanding that those yellow and red lights that annoy us and drag us down will soon to turn green.

He is married, has three children, and founded the “just keep living Foundation,” which helps at-risk high schoolers make “healthier mind, body, and spirit choices.” He is also professor of practice of the University of Texas and Minister of Culture for the University of Texas and City of Austin.

Mims Cushing lives in Ponte Vedra Beach and has written three books .

Ryan's Reading Reviews

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Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

Updated June 12th, 202 3

Alright, Alright, Alright. Time for my review of Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey’s new book. (I won’t ruin it for you, but there is definitely a story in there about how the iconic “ McConaugheyian ” three word catchphrase came about, which may be worth the price of the book alone. (Hint: you could also just Google it. ;))

A Novel non-Novel

See what I did there? Ok, I haven’t read too many memoirs , but Greenlights is definitely unique in this regard. McConaughey shares some personal anecdotes, stories, and life lessons , so it’s part memoir, part personal development, part just entertaining storytelling.

Well, What Are these “Greenlights”?

By “Greenlights”, McConnaughey means things that set you up for success. It could be a system, habit stacking, building momentum, having small wins, etc. Here a few examples of “Greenlights”:

Meditating in the morning
Drinking Bulletproof Coffee (unless you have high cholesterol ).
Laying out your gym clothes the night before, so you don’t have to spend energy in the morning.
Basically, anything that sets you up for success/makes your life easier!

What is Becoming Relative with the Inevitable?

McConaughey also uses the catchphrase “ becoming relative with the inevitable” throughout the book. This phrase and idea really resonated with me. But what does it mean?

Becoming relative with the inevitable means, simply, shit is going to happen in life . That’s inevitable. Life is full of ups and downs, but in this case, we are focusing on the downs :(. When you are in a tough situation, you can become relative – that means you can persist through the challenge/adversity and keep doing what you are doing. You can pivot – change, and do something different. Or, you can concede- give up.

McConaughey says, what you do in these tough situations, and when , could help us in our own art of living . Though he call’s it livin’, without the “g”, throughout the book for some reason, probably just cause he’s Matthew McConaughey.

Greenlights is full of other cool/fun stories which I never knew about him- he shares some personal stuff which I will let you read about in the book, not on my blog.

Did you know he drove around the United States in an RV for years? He would fly out and pick up a producer or agent at an airport and drive them back home in his RV, all while discussing the movie scripts. All in a days work! But, how cool to have all that freedom!

How Many Stars?

4.5 stars 🙂.

A pretty interesting and fast read if you want to learn more about him and take some of his life lessons and apply them to your own life for personal growth .

Bonus points if you read this book imaging his voice like I did!

–>Buy the book here<–

May all your lights be green!

BOOK DETAILS ONE MORE TIME

Title: Greenlights Author: Matthew McConaughey Publish Date: October 20, 2020 ISBN: 0593139135 ISBN-13: 978-0593139134

Book | eBook | Audio

Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: Ryan’s Reading Reviews is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

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Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey Goodreads Score 4.29 | 29,820 Ratings | 4,604 Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Alright, alright, alright, let’s talk Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I enjoy reading fiction and listening to nonfiction on audio. I especially love it when the author reads their book for the audio version. Matthew McConaughey does not disappoint with the reading of Greenlights. McConaughey’s storytelling will leave you mesmerized and fully immersed in what he is sharing.

Greenlights includes what McConaughey calls bumper stickers, prescriptions, and poems while telling his story. These are lessons he has learned throughout his life and has molded him into who he is today. The lessons and experiences he shares throughout the book will give you an interesting perspective on certain life situations.

My Favorite Tidbits and Quotes

Less impressed. More involved.

All destruction leads to construction.

I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.

Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.

I haven’t made all A’s in the art of living. But I give a damn. And I’ll take an experienced C over an ignorant A any day .

I’d rather lose money havin fun than make money being bored.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey is entertaining, engaging, fun, thoughtful, light-hearted while also having a profound message. I highly recommend it. If you choose to read it, definitely listen to the audiobook.

Have you read Greenlights? How did you like it? Let’s chat in the comments below! As always, thank you so much for stopping by and reading. If you enjoyed this book review, please take a moment to like and share. I also hope you’ll consider subscribing before you leave.

Until next time be happy, be kind, be you!

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The Wisdom of Matthew McConaughey

A frank and friendly memoir from a working-class kid who hit the jackpot

A self-confessed diarist, Matthew McConaughey draws on a trove of handwritten notes, journals, poems and short stories he’s been collecting since boyhood in his new and utterly charming 500-page memoir Greenlights. McConaughey, obviously comfortable expressing himself in writing, has developed the rich, inner life that comes from honest personal exploration. The result is a frank and friendly memoir of a kid from a working-class background who hit the jackpot and rose to Hollywood fame (sometimes despite himself), keeping his eyes open and wits about him throughout the journey.

The focus of Greenlights is on the formation of McConaughey’s character and personal value set. Part One deals with his childhood with unsentimental clarity. Events such as lying to his father, building a treehouse or working summer jobs are pressed rigorously through the screen of what they taught him about how to live successfully. The key, McConaughey maintains, is awareness:

“Catching greenlights is about skill, intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them. We can also earn greenlights, engineer and design for them. We can create more and schedule them in our future–a path of least resistance–through force of will, hard work, and the choices we make. We can be responsible for greenlights.”

Although the language is simple and the expressions occasionally cliché, McConaughey arranges them prettily–and to good effect. The development of a personal approach to life is immediately put to the test when the author applies it to the task of forging a career in Hollywood. McConaughey takes us through his journey, pointing out where he hit red lights and, more importantly, why. He then takes the extraordinary step of admitting responsibility for his own screw-ups and explaining what he learned from them. Such an unblinking public confessional is rare in print and takes real courage. The result is a narrative containing some fine and hard-won wisdom. It is, in fact, an object lesson in adulthood.

It’s fair to call McConaughey a natural talent–an instinctive actor who happened to be at the right place in the right time. He applied this same “red light/greenlight” philosophy to the task of preparing for his first role–that of the lecherous creep Wooderson in Richard Linklater’s 1993 Dazed and Confused . A surprise offer from the film’s producer, with whom he had unknowingly spent a night carousing, McConaughey describes the task of developing the character (or, as he puts it, “finding his guy”) by drawing on a memory from the richly-documented trove of his life experience.

“That image of my big brother, leaning against that wall, casually smoking that cigarette in his low-elbow, loose-wristed, lay-fingered way, through my romantic eleven-year-old little brother eyes, was the epitome of cool. He was literally ten feet tall. It left an engraved impression on my heart and mind…And eleven years later, Wooderson was born from that impression.”

McConaughey’s career, unlike the long plod of a Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino, took off like a rocket. Finding himself suddenly the toast of Hollywood after his unlikely casting as the hero in the 1996 adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” McConaughey experienced the psychological vertigo that comes with instant celebrity. His response was to retreat to a monastery in New Mexico for a period of prayer and reflection. Having ‘Gone Up,’ he then chose to ‘Go Within’, presumably, in search of more greenlights.

In preparation for writing this column, I read the book while working night shift at a community center on Vancouver Island in Canada. On my rounds, I mentioned it to my friend John, a janitor and local BC fixture for decades.

“Oh, yeah,” John said. “McConaughey. He was filming a movie here in BC and the cast and crew were all staying at some upscale hotel in downtown Vancouver. But McConaughey rented an Airstream trailer and anchored down at the campground by the Peace Arch. After a day of shooting, I guess it was burgers and beers back at Matt’s place with the campground locals. Folks said he was a real nice, down-to-earth guy.”

Hollywood is rife with stories of cut-throat ambition and badly-behaved celebs for whom we make endless excuses. Drug addiction? Sexual excesses? Financial impropriety? All acceptable so long as the guilty party adds value to the studio bottom line. But we all know, deep down, that it’s never really acceptable. Ultimately, those who make our art inform our culture through their work. And that work is a product of their values and character.

It’s refreshing to encounter a story about a good guy making it in a tough racket. It’s even more refreshing when that person turns out to be articulate, self-aware and eager to share what he learned along the way. Greenlights tells just such a story. By turns humorous and reflective, it is fast paced, engaging and well-written. Reading it was time well-spent and I recommend it without reservation.

Jamie Mason

Jamie Mason is the author of The Book of Ashes, Certain Fury, and The North Atlantic Protocol . His most recent effort, THE BOOK OF JAMES , is a historical epic set in Viking-era Britain.

One thought on “ The Wisdom of Matthew McConaughey ”

Nicely Written! It’s an autobiographical snapshot of Matthew McConaughey’s early upbringing in Texas. His early career in Hollywood and ultimately where he is today. And it is told through stories and also journal entries from McConaughey from back in 1992. During the course of this book, the author Matthew McConaughey always brings up the term “Greenlight,” which is also the title of the book. Reference: https://rufbuk.com/summary-quotes-greenlights-book-by-matthew-mcconaughey/

Zen and the art of torso maintenance: Matthew McConaughey's guide to life

In a new book, Hollywood’s ‘easy-livin’ superstar bares all about his route to the top. Here are some choice nuggets of McConna-sense

T he biggest question in the universe, writes Matthew McConaughey in his new autobiography (of sorts) is “WHOWHATWHEREWHENHOW?? – and that’s the truth. WHY? is even bigger.” With Greenlights, his love letter to livin , McConaughey attempts to answer these questions and others, such as why he never puts a “g” on the end of “living” – “because life’s a verb”.

Greenlights is not a memoir, though it tells true stories from his life in chronological order. Nor is it “an advice book”. It is “an approach book”, bringing together McConaughey’s insights from 35 years of writing journals, and more of collecting bumper stickers. These “philosophies can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted”. A few are shared here.

‘The value of denial depends on one’s level of commitment’

“Like a good southern boy should”, McConaughey begins with his mother. When McConaughey is eight years old, she enters him into the Little Mr Texas contest. He wins, and his mom hangs a framed picture of him holding his trophy on the kitchen wall. Every morning at breakfast, she gestures to it. “Look at you: winner, Little Mr Texas, 1977.”

Now 50, McConaughey is an Oscar-winning actor, a bankable star and still one of the most handsome men in Hollywood. He has been up and down, endured boom and bust, gone from livin on easy street to trailer parks. He has weathered hard winters of the soul, and long professional droughts. Through it all he’s always been Winner, Little Mr Texas, 1977.

Last year, McConaughey came across the same photo in a scrapbook. The trophy reads “runner-up”. When he confronted his mother, she said the winner was wealthy and won with his fancy suit. “We call that cheatin. No, you’re Little Mr Texas.” McConaughey calls this the lesson of “audacious existentialism”.

‘To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity’

This proclamation, on a bumper sticker reproduced in the book, captures the young McConaughey’s home life: full of love and also violence. (“I’ve always loved bumper stickers, so much so that I’ve stuck bumper to sticker and made them one word, bumpersticker .”)

McConaughey’s parents divorced twice and married thrice, to each other. His father broke his mother’s finger four times, “to get it out of his face”; he later died from a heart attack mid-intercourse, as he’d always said he would. “Yes,” writes McConaughey, “he called his shot all right.”

McConaughey as Jake Tyler Brigance in A Time to Kill, 1996.

At dinner one Wednesday night, his father asks for more potatoes. His mother calls him fat. His father overturns the table. His mother breaks his nose with the phone receiver while calling 911. She pulls out a 12in knife. His father grabs a 14oz ketchup bottle. They circle each other, him slashing her with sauce, dodging her knife.

Their gazes meet, “Mom thumbing the ketchup from her wet eyes, Dad just standing there, letting the blood drip from his nose down his chest … They dropped to their knees, then to the bloody, ketchup-covered linoleum kitchen floor … and made love. A red light turned green. This is how my parents communicated.”

Don’t lose your truck

High school for McConaughey was summer time, all the time. He got straight As and dated the best-looking girl at his school and the other schools. He had a job, no curfew, and a golf handicap of four.

He had two years of acne, brought on by a cosmetic called Oil of Mink that his mother was selling door to door – but, blighted by whiteheads (“blistering geysers of pus”), he was still voted most handsome in his year. “Yeah, I was catching greenlights.”

McConaughey was the fun guy. Not for him, leaning against the wall at the party, smoking and looking cool. He engaged . He took the girls four-wheel driving in his truck, and flirted with them through a megaphone: “ Look at the jeans Cathy Cook’s got on today, lookin gooooooood! ” “Everyone laughed. Especially Cathy Cook.”

With Rory Cochrane, left, in Dazed and Confused, 1993.

One day he trades in his truck for a sports car that he knew the chicks would dig even more. He gets to school early each day and just leeeaaans against it. “I was so cool. My red sports car was so cool.”

But after a few weeks, he notices a cloud has cast across his summer sky: “The chicks, they weren’t digging me like they used to.” They were out four-wheel driving with someone else. It hits him: “I lost the effort, the hustle, the mudding, and the megaphone. I lost the fun .” He gets his truck back.

It’s never just outside Sydney

Mrs McConaughey suggests McConaughey go on a year-long foreign exchange. His response is immediate: “Sounds adventurous and wild, I’m in.”

His host family in Australia tell him they lived in paradise, near the beach, on the outskirts of Sydney. It turns out to be two hours north and inland – a one-street country town of fewer than 2,000 people.

His host family soon reveal themselves to be intensely strange and, at school, Australian chicks do not dig him. Though the “cultural differences” start to get to him quickly, McConaughey has signed a contract saying he will not leave within a year. And so, for the first time, meaningfully, in his life McConaughey is forced into winter.

McConaughey with his mother, Kay, at the premiere of Two for the Money in 2005.

In Australia, “Macka” hits nothing but red lights. He starts writing nine-, 12-, 16-page letters home – and then, when no one replies, to himself. Seeking discipline, he becomes a vegetarian, eating iceberg lettuce with ketchup for dinner every night, and practises abstinence.

In Texas, McConaughey had planned on becoming a lawyer. But increasingly he believes it is his calling to become a monk and free Nelson Mandela. By day 148, he is down to 140 pounds, has not only quit school but is on to his sixth job, and actively at war with his host family. His only solaces are the U2 album Rattle and Hum and poetry. “I was in the bathtub every night before sundown jacking off to Lord Byron.”

‘Form good habits and become their slave’

Back in Texas, in college, McConaughey starts to have doubts about his plans to study law. These are cemented when he stumbles upon a self-help book, The Greatest Salesman in the World, at a friend’s house.

The book’s decree to become a “slave” to self-discipline – intended to be read three times a day for 30 days – absorbs McConaughey completely. Soon afterwards he starts film school, where he is a frat guy among goths, an outcast for liking popular movies.

While bartending, he meets casting director Don Phillips, who casts him for a small part in a film called Dazed and Confused . The first words McConaughey ever says on film are: “All right, all right, all right.”

‘When you can, ask yourself if you want to’

McConaughey lands an agent and parts in Angels in America and Boys on the Side. He adopts a puppy – Ms Hud, a lab-chow mix who becomes his longtime companion – and rents a quaint guesthouse on the edge of a national park in Tucson, Arizona. The house comes with a maid, who cooks and cleans.

McConaughey can’t believe his fortunes. “She even presses my jeans!” he raves to a friend, holding up his Levi’s to show her the crisp, starched-white line. His friend smiles, then says something McConaughey would never forget: “That’s great, Matthew, if you want your jeans pressed .”

“I’d never had my jeans pressed before,” he writes. “I’d never had anyone to press my jeans before. I’d never thought to ask myself if I wanted my jeans pressed … Of course I wanted my jeans pressed. Or did I?

“No, actually. I didn’t.”

Follow your dreams

In 1996, A Time to Kill makes McConaughey famous overnight. The press credits him with saving the movies. “Hell, I didn’t know they needed saving, and if they did, I wasn’t sure I was or wanted to be the one to save them.”

Then his mother gives a television crew a guided tour of McConaughey’s childhood home, pointing out “the bed where he lost his virginity to Melissa, I think her name was” – straining their relationship for the next eight years.

McConaughey as Rusty Cohle in season one of True Detective.

McConaughey desperately desires to disappear, to go somewhere he can hear himself think , to check out so that he can check in . Then he has a strange dream. He sees himself naked, on his back, floating down the Amazon river, African tribesmen lined up shoulder to shoulder on the shore. Then he ejaculates. It had “all the elements of a nightmare,” McConaughey marvels, “but it was a wet dream.”

After poring over his atlas for more than two hours, searching for meaning, he learns the Amazon is not in Africa. Undaunted, he packs a backpack with his journal, some ecstasy and his favourite headband and flies to South America – “to chase down my wet dream.”

‘When you’re up to nothin’, no good’s usually next’

In 2000, a few years after his last hit, McConaughey accepts a generous offer to star in The Wedding Planner opposite Jennifer Lopez. He moves – with Ms Hud and his conga drums (“the purest and most instinctual instruments”) – into the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood.

“Single, healthy, honest and eligible”, he revels in the mischief and transience afforded by a high-class hotel. Days of “it’d be rude not to” are followed by mornings of “I don’t knows”. He showers in the daytime, “rarely alone”, and cooks steaks at 3am. He partakes .

But after 18 months of hedonism, the booze, the women, the gluttony start to wear thin. McConaughey tires of livin on easy street: “I needed some yellow lights.” He finds himself questioning the existence of a God. “An existential crisis? I’d call it an existential challenge.”

Unrelatedly, he is also losing his hair.

Sometimes it will be the same sign

After shaving his head to encourage thicker regrowth, a two-year course of a product called Regenix applied twice daily and “an aboriginal handshake with a friend that guarantees what two people agree on will happen if they both believe it ”, McConaughey’s hairline bounces back better than ever.

Then, shooting Reign of Fire in Ireland, he has a strange dream. He sees himself naked, on his back, floating down the Amazon river, African tribesmen lined up shoulder to shoulder on the shore – then he ejaculates. “Yes, the exact same wet dream I had had five years earlier.”

It was a sign. “It was now time to go to Africa.”

Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club.

‘Truth’s like a jalape ño. The closer to the root, the hotter it gets’

As Hollywood’s go-to romcom guy, McConaughey is at first unbothered by the fact he is a critical write-off. “I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their pay checks rented the houses on the beaches I ran shirtless on.”

In July 2005 he meets his future wife, embraces family life, and becomes increasingly unsatisfied by his parts. He tells his agent: no more romcoms. And he waits.

He gets offers of $5m, $8m, $14.5m for two months’ work. He turns them down. For nearly two years, he refuses to give the industry what it wants from him – and one day he is discovered again.

The offers come in droves, almost as many as after A Time to Kill in 1996 – from Linklater, Soderbergh, Scorsese. While shooting The Wolf of Wall Street McConaughey thumps his chest and hums to relax before each take. Leonardo DiCaprio suggests he do it in the scene .

Despite lack of interest from directors and financiers, McConaughey perseveres with making Dallas Buyers Club – and wins an Oscar for it. He is offered the part of Marty Hart in True Detective, holds out for Rustin Cohle, and gets it. “It was my favourite thing on TV. Still is.”

McConaughey is as fulfilled as he’s ever been. He has flipped the script, tipped the scale. They are calling it the McConnaissance. Ever wonder who came up with that? He did. At Sundance in 2013, McConaughey had told one reporter that another reporter had told him, knowing that it would stick. He figured he needed a bumpersticker.

Greenlights is published by Headline, £20 .

Matthew McConaughey
Autobiography and memoir
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Book reviews, life is our résumé. it is our story to tell., relatively, we are livin. life is our résumé. it is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back inevitably, we are going to die. our eulogy, our story, will be told by others and forever introduce us when we are gone., subjects: autobiography & biography.

If you have seen the movie ‘Interstellar’ you know the man Matthew McConaughey, the Academy Award® winning actor for Dallas Buyers Club. Here is a memoir by him, his life for fifty years, his journal that he kept giving instances of his successes and failures, his parents and children, and his movies, that can act as a guide to me and you. Greenlights is an unconventional memoir, with notes and bumperstickers he has included in the book which I found more valuable than his life stories. These are the headlamps to help you move on the autobahn of life as the author says.

“While writing this book, I found this in a pile of my journal–buck slip–napkin–beer coaster notes and scribbles. I’d never seen it since I’d written it. Notice the date. Two days after finishing my first-ever acting role as “Wooderson” in Dazed and Confused. Fourteen days after my dad moved on. (Like I said, I guess I remembered more than I forgot.)”

You get Red lights, Orange light and green lights in your life, you have to focus on green, and keep moving ahead.

We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we fuck up, we get fucked, we get sick, we don’t get what we want, we cross thousands of “could have done better”s and “wish that wouldn’t have happened”s in life. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often.

As the author runs through his life, the nuggets of advice he gives (note for himself) us, which includes relationships with others

We are not here to tolerate our differences, we are here to accept them. We are not here to celebrate our sameness, we are here to salute our distinctions. We are not born into equal circumstances, or with equal abilities, but we should have equal opportunity. As individuals, we unite in our values. Celebrate that.

The book ends in a Red Light, we are all facing. COVID-19.

When I was putting the finishing touches on this book earlier this year, my life, like yours, was intercepted by a red-light drama called COVID-19.

If you are a Matthew McConaughey fan, you would love this book. If you have an positive attitude towards life and would like to read how Mathew drove in a SUV through the tough terrain of his life, this book is for you.

#1 New York Times bestseller, GREENLIGHTS is the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through @McConaughey 's lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction. GREENLIGHTS written & read by author @McConaughey , avail on #audio pic.twitter.com/uxhoobNaF2 — Penguin Random House Audio 🎧 📚 (@PRHAudio) December 15, 2021

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'Greenlights' Book Review: Matthew McConaughey Peels Back Layers of His Life

To Matthew McConaughey , life is about making the greenlights. Here's how the metaphor goes:

"We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the redlights are in our life and then change course to hit fewer of them."

These are among the many words of wisdom proferred in Greenlights , McConaughey's autobiography published by Crown in 2020, The Texas-born actor turned 50 in November.

Best known for his Oscar-winning turn in Dallas Buyers Club , McConaughey got his start playing Wooderson in Dazed and Confused i n 1993. He reminisces about the famous one-liner, " Alright, alright, alright , " from the latter film:

"Now, 28 years later, those words follow me everywhere. People say them. People steal them. People wear them on their hats and t-shirts. People have them tattoed on their arms and inner thighs. And I love it. It's an honor. Because those three words were the very first words I said in the very first night of the job I had that I thought might be nothing but a hobby, but turned into a career."

Greenlights is not your typical celebrity tell-all. McConaughey spends as much time revealing Hollywood secrets as his does sharing travel stories from touring around the U.S. with his dog and adventure trips to South America and Africa.

He jumps from movie to movie, making significant stops at Dazed and Confused , A Time to Kill and Dallas Buyers Club . McConaughey focuses quite a bit on how he bolted from popular rom-com roles and shifted to dramas, ultimately leading to the Academy Award Best Actor award in 2014 for his powerful portrayal HIV sufferer Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club . (he slimmed down to 135 pounds for the role).

RELATED: 2020 Dazed and Confused Table Read Ft. McConaughey

There are numerous references to marijuana, cocaine and Ecstasy in the book, and a revealing section about when McConaughey lived at Los Angeles' party-central hotel Chateau Marmont for 18 months in 2000-2001.

Busted in 1999 for marijuana possession and resisting arrest during a late-night raid after neighbors called police about noise blasting from his house near Austin, McConaughey explains it all started when the University of Texas, where he attended, defeated Nebraska in a football game that weekend, setting off a two-day bender:

"At 2:30 that morning I finally decided to wind down... It was time to smoke a bowl and listen to the beautiful melodic African beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers. It was time to stand over my drum set and follow the rhythm of the blues before they got to Memphis, on my favorite Afro-Cuban drum born of ceremony and speaking in tongues, the congas... "It was time to lose my mind in it, take flights into the haze and slip into the dream. It was time for a jam session."

McConaughey was so caught up in the moment, he didn't realize police had "barged into [his] house unannounced." They wrestled the actor, who was naked, to the floor and handcuffed him. He initially refused to put on clothes, saying several times, "This is proof of my innocence." (He donned a pair of pants in the police station.)

Ultimately, all charges were dismissed except for the sound violation:

"Well, obviously I was lucky, walking out of jail only $50 poorer - this didn't happen to everyone who got hauled in on charges like resisting arrest and marijuana possession."

The 300-page hardcover concludes with McConaughey reflecting on 2020, the year of Covid-19 and racial strife in America. About George Floyd 's death, he acknowledges:

"The unjust murder sparked a social justice revolution in America and around the world, and as racism reared its ugly head into the spotlight once again, we were reminded that All Lives couldn't matter until Black Lives matter more."

Alright, alright, alright.

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Greenlights Paperback – March 30, 2021

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Language English
Publisher HACHETTE
Publication date March 30, 2021
Dimensions 5.08 x 0.98 x 7.76 inches
ISBN-10 1472280873
ISBN-13 978-1472280879
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ HACHETTE (March 30, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1472280873
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1472280879
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.98 x 7.76 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #8,497 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

Matthew mcconaughey.

Academy Award–winning actor Matthew McConaughey is a married man, a father of three children, and a loyal son and brother. He considers himself a storyteller by occupation, believes it's okay to have a beer on the way to the temple, feels better with a day’s sweat on him, and is an aspiring orchestral conductor.

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Glen Powell Reveals His Dad and Matthew McConaughey Had Hilarious Encounter but Became 'Best Friends'

Powell also earned some high praise for his spot-on McConaughey impression while telling the tale on ‘The Tonight Show’

Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty

Matthew McConaughey and Glen Powell ’s dad are alright, alright, alright. While appearing on The Tonight Show on April 5, the Anyone But You star, 35, revealed that his father, Glen Powell Sr. , met McConaughey in a hilarious moment — and the pair became fast friends.

After host Jimmy Fallon brought up that Powell is being inducted into the Austin Film Society Texas Film Hall of Fame in May, the conversation quickly transitioned to McConaughey, 54.

A past inductee himself, “McConaughey is Texas,” as Powell put it.

"McConaughey and I are now pals,” Powell said before revealing that his “first time meeting” the movie star did not unfold the way he imagined it.

The Top Gun: Maverick star recalled the first time he and McConaughey crossed paths at a ranch in Bastrop, Texas, belonging to Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater. Powell's father was with him at the time.

“We're taking a walk around the property,” Powell said, “and I say, ‘Hey, can we go to the library where we kind of rehearsed all that stuff?’ And [Linklater] goes, 'You know, I think Matthew's in there.’ “

“So I kind of open the door, and there's this kind of sliver of light that hits this guy, and he's like, ‘Hey, hey, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on,’ “ the actor continued, doing a stellar impression of McConaughey that earned him a round of applause from Fallon and the audience.

According to the star, McConaughey — who was in the library working on his memoir Greenlights — recognized him, saying, "Wait, I know you, I know you,” but had not seen Powell’s father yet.

"So he steps out into the light out of the door, and then he goes, ‘Now, now, who are you?’ And my dad goes, 'Oh, I have a picture of you next to my bed,’ “ Powell said, and recalled thinking, 'Stop doing this, Dad. Whatever this is, stop!' "

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But thankfully, McConaughey gave Powell Sr. a chance to explain, and he told the actor he was referring to a copy of Alcalde Magazine , a publication for University of Texas alumni, that has the star on the cover.

"And Matthew goes, ‘That is my favorite photo shoot I have ever done in my whole life, let me tell you.’ And he grabs [my dad] by the shoulder, and they become best friends,” Powell said. “It was great.”

In the comment section of the Tonight Show clip, which was shared on Instagram, people appeared to be more enthralled by Powell’s McConaughey voice than his actual story, calling the impression “on point” and “killer.”

One top comment read, “I’ve never heard a better McConaughey impression!” and another said, “Most people exaggerate MM too much, but this was perfect!”

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Glen Powell’s starstruck dad told Matthew McConaughey he has a photo of him next to his bed

“I’m like, ‘Stop doing this, Dad. Whatever this is, stop.’”

Glen Powell still worries that his first encounter with Matthew McConaughey was not alright, alright, alright.

The Anyone but You star recalled meeting the Interstellar actor for the first time during his appearance on Friday's episode of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon , explaining that at the time he and his father were visiting a Texas ranch owned by Richard Linklater, the filmmaker with whom he worked on Fast Food Nation , Everybody Wants Some , Apollo 10 ½ , and the upcoming Hit Man . (Linklater also made Dazed and Confused , The Newton Boys , and Bernie with McConaughey.)

“We’re taking a walk around the property, and I go, ‘Hey, can we go to the library where we kinda rehearsed all that stuff [for Everybody Wants Some ]?’” Powell said. “And [Linklater] goes, ‘Y’know, I think Matthew’s in there.’ And I said, ‘Matthew — maybe, maybe it’s McConaughey. Maybe it’s the Matthew.’ So I kinda open the door, and there’s this kinda sliver of light that hits this guy, and he’s like, ‘Hey, hey, woah, woah, hold on!’”

Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty; Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty

Powell said McConaughey was using the space to work on his memoir Greenlights . “He goes, ‘Wait, I know you, I know you. Glen, I know you,’” he remembered. “Then my dad did not see him yet. So he steps out into the light, out of the door, and then [McConaughey] goes, ‘Now, who are you?’ And my dad goes, ‘Oh, I have a picture of you next to my bed.’”

Powell was horrified. “I look at my dad. I’m like, ‘Stop doing this, Dad. Whatever this is, stop,’” he said before explaining the backstory behind his dad’s strange confession. “There’s this University of Texas magazine called The Alcalde . McConaughey is on the cover. So he goes, ‘No, no, no, I have the University of Texas magazine next to my bed.’”

Fortunately, McConaughey was as enthusiastic about the magazine. “Matthew goes, ‘That is my favorite photo shoot I have ever done in my whole life, lemme tell you,' and he grabs him by the shoulder, and they become best friends,” Powell said. "Very charming man."

Watch the full Tonight Show clip above.

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Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Book Review: Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
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GREENLIGHTS
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, Hardcover, 9780593139134
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey ~ Book Review

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Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey book review
Matthew McConaughey's memoir, " Greenlights ," has a way of convincing you that being Matthew McConaughey is just about the easiest thing in the world. Look at his filmography, and you'll ...
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
April 29, 2022. Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey began writing when he was fourteen years old. He described the book as a collection of stories, prayers, poems, people and places and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. The book includes stories and insights from McConaughey's life in chronological order.
GREENLIGHTS
Once, then once more.". It's clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card-ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons. A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey's life and ...
Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey
The book offers a shotgun seat to all the l-i-v-i-n that McConaughey has accumulated, from his upbringing in a tumultuous Texas family to his ascent as the ruggedly serene star of "Magic Mike ...
Greenlights Book Review
Greenlights Book Review. Towards the end of 2020, it seemed that almost everywhere I went someone was reading - or talking about - Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. There were people thumbing through it on the beach; dog-eared copies sat next to half-drunk cups of coffee in cafes dotted around Bondi, and nearly every time I was in ...
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In his recently released 'Greenlights,' the Texan actor spins tall tales that just so happen to be true. Matthew McConaughey wants you to know that Greenlights isn't your typical celebrity ...
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GreenlightsMatthew McConaughy5 Diamond Review💎💎💎💎💎Greenlights, written by Matthew McConaughy is one of the best autobiographies I have ever read and listened to. I ordered it first on Audible. I enjoyed the book so much, I ordered a hard copy as well.
Book review: Matthew McConaughey's candid memoir, 'Greenlights'
Book review: Candid, lively memoir from Matthew McConaughey ... Crown, 289 pages, $30. If you're curious to know when Matthew McConaughey first used his signature phrase, "Alright, alright ...
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Updated June 12th, 2023. Alright, Alright, Alright. Time for my review of Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey's new book. (I won't ruin it for you, but there is definitely a story in there about how the iconic "McConaugheyian" three word catchphrase came about, which may be worth the price of the book alone.(Hint: you could also just Google it.
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Check out this post for a book review. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey Goodreads Score 4.29 | 29,820 Ratings | 4,604 Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Alright, alright, alright, let's talk Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I enjoy reading fiction and listening to nonfiction on audio. ...
Greenlights By Matthew McConaughey Review
December 7, 2020 Jamie Mason. A self-confessed diarist, Matthew McConaughey draws on a trove of handwritten notes, journals, poems and short stories he's been collecting since boyhood in his new and utterly charming 500-page memoir Greenlights. McConaughey, obviously comfortable expressing himself in writing, has developed the rich, inner ...
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With Greenlights, his love letter to livin, McConaughey attempts to answer these questions and others, such as why he never puts a "g" on the end of "living" - "because life's a verb".
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I received a copy of Greenlights included in the price of the ticket I purchased for a virtual Q&A between Matthew McConaughey and Ethan Hawke as one of the keynote events of the Texas Book Festival this year. At no more than ten to fifteen pages in, as much as I was already enjoying the book, I realised I needed to hear him tell this story. My purchase of the audiobook may go down as the ...
Greenlights
Greenlights. Matthew McConaughey. Crown, Oct 20, 2020 - Biography & Autobiography - 304 pages. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award®-winning actor's unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with ...
Greenlights (book)
Matthew McConaughey: Audio read by: Matthew McConaughey: Cover artist: Miller Mobley (photo) ... Greenlights is a 2020 book by American actor Matthew McConaughey. It was published on October 20, 2020, ... In their review, The Times of India wrote, "The writing is conversational and easy to read, though this is one book whose audiobook form is ...
Book Review: Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Greenlights is an unconventional memoir, with notes and bumperstickers he has included in the book which I found more valuable than his life stories. These are the headlamps to help you move on the autobahn of life as the author says. ... If you are a Matthew McConaughey fan, you would love this book. If you have an positive attitude towards ...
Book Marks reviews of Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
So, on a scale of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days to True Detective I figure Greenlights is a solid Magic Mike — simply structured, a little flashy, but not as insightful as it wants you to think it is. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey has an overall rating of Positive based on 5 book reviews.
'Greenlights' Book Review: Matthew McConaughey Peels Back Layers of His
To Matthew McConaughey, life is about making the greenlights. Here's how the metaphor goes: "We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the redlights are in our life and then change course to hit fewer of them." These are among the many words of wisdom proferred in Greenlights, McConaughey's autobiography published by Crown in ...
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The title of the book "Greenlights" is the basic premise surrounding the autobiography. "The problems we face today eventually turn into blessings in the rearview mirror of life," McConaughey writes. "In time, yesterday's red light leads us to a green light. All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually ...
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It's clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card-ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons. A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey's life and thought. Read Full Review >>.
Greenlights: McConaughey Matthew: 9781472280879: Amazon.com: Books
Matthew McConaughey. Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey is a married man, a father of three children, and a loyal son and brother. He considers himself a storyteller by occupation, believes it's okay to have a beer on the way to the temple, feels better with a day's sweat on him, and is an aspiring orchestral conductor.
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4.32. 272 ratings23 reviews. Your Journal, Your Journey is a guided companion to the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Greenlights, filled with prompts, pithy quotes, adages, outlaw wisdom, and advice on how to live with greater satisfaction from Matthew McConaughey. Matthew has been writing in journals since he was fifteen years old.
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey - Book Review. 18 May 2023 25 April 2023 by Leonora D. Walburn. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. 4.35. Plot 4.5/5. Connectivity 4.0/5. Writing 4.5/5. Strength Conversational & Humorous Tone; ... Get This Book Now. Welcome to Barking Book Reviews! ...
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Matthew McConaughey is ‘alright, alright, alright’ — and thinks you will be too

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