Matthew McConaughey Talks Manhood

Matthew McConaughey recently sat down for an interview with Esquire Magazine. Here's what he had to say:

On criticism of his Lincoln commercials:

" 'You just won an Oscar. What are you doing, doing a Lincoln commercial?' Fuck that. Because I'm going to. And I like 'em . . .and they pay well. And they allow me to go and do these other little movies for a lot less."

On deciding to do True Detective:

"Man, it's TV. Do you really want to do TV? This story is fucking great. Yes."

On staying true to himself:

"I didn't grow up acting. I don't enjoy thespian, Hamlet-ian talks. I was the first frat boy in the University of Texas film school who wore button-down denim shirts, boots, and a buckle when all the Gothic artists were all in black. I went to see the big Hollywood pictures at the cineplex that everyone else in film class shat on. And for a while I thought maybe you really do need to wear all black and stay out of the sunlight and only see independent films to be an artist. I still have moments with acting where I'm like, I'm getting away with it. Winning the Oscar was validation, the respect of my peers."

On using his brother Rooster as the inspiration for Wooderson in Dazed and Confused:

"I'm in the back of my mom's car when Mom's going to high school to pick up my brother. I'm eleven. We pull into the high school, and I see my brother leaning against the wall in the smoking section, smoking, knee up, looks eight feet tall and cooler than James Dean. When my parents went out of town, my brother let me drive his Z28, air induction on the hood. We'd listen to Mellencamp and we'd listen to Nugent. AC/DC never sounded better than that. That's Wooderson."

On wife Camila:

"A good woman gives a man courage and confidence—the courage to have the confidence to go and do it, to not be worried as much or consider as much what the rest of the world thinks."

On the birth of his son Levi:

"Out comes this screaming little life with a pair of balls...Man is never more masculine than after the birth of his first child. I don't mean in a macho way. I mean in terms of giving a man strength."

On his parents' marriage (they divorced and remarried, twice):

"They were wild, man. They fought. My mom broke her middle finger four times from banging my dad in the head. I've seen her stick a water hose in his car and fill it up with water. They pulled knives. I've seen tables flip. Furniture broke...Man, I tell these stories and people might get the wrong idea; they are love stories, man. They could not live without each other."

Read the full interview at Esquire.