While it would come as a shock to no one that Matthew McConaughey is laid back, it may surprise some that when it comes to parenting, he is “very disciplined,” per his wife, Camila Alves.
Alves, 39, revealed that he is also a “very hands-on dad,” to their three children.
And despite the McConaughey’s fame, Alves says they’re like any other family.
“It’s just like raising kids with, you know, as any family would do. It’s got its challenges and its blessings, but I would say it’s fun.”
The couple welcomed their first child, Levi, in July of 2008. And in January of 2010, had a girl named Vida. Followed by their third child, a boy named Livingston, who was born in December 2012. Alves and McConaughey, who first met at a bar back in 2006, married in January of 2012.
In a 2020 interview with TODAY, McConaughey informed Willie Geist how his childhood was the complete opposite of how he is raising his kids today.
“I don’t raise my children the same way my parents raised me … but I don’t dare judge how my parents did it because every single time I got in trouble or got the belt or whatever, I earned it,” he said.
McConaughey spoke on his “bloody, ugly, sometimes violent” childhood in his memoir, “Greenlights.”
“I choose in our family to have much more dialogue than my parents choose or their parents choose,” he said at the time. “My wife and I do a little more explaining. ‘OK, let’s debate this out.’ … And even today, my mom goes, ‘Geez, y’all talk about it too much.'”
His mother, Kay McConaughey, recently sat down and addressed the eight-year time span where they did not speak to each other.
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Matthew was featured on Facebook Watch’s popular show Red Table Talk next to his 88-year-old mother in their first joint-interview where they spoke on healing after an estrangement.
“As soon as I got ‘famous’ after [1996’s] A Time to Kill, I started to have my weekly Sunday call home to call my mother,” McConaughey, 51, told hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris.
But something had shifted at home. “Mother wasn’t answering the phone. A fan of my fame was answering the phone.”
“I was trying to find my own balance with fame and stuff. And I would share things with her… some of those things I would share might show up in the six o’clock news three days later,” he recalled as Kay sat next to him.
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Matthew revealed he cut Kay out of his life for some time, saying, “I was not able to talk to her as my mom for about eight years.”
“There were years there where I would not share things with her because I was also finding my own balance. I was like, ‘Look, mom, loose lips will sink ships. There are a lot of people that would like to know these things and it’s none of their business.’”
McConaughey revealed how over time, he was able to know what he wanted on his career, saying, “My boat was built well enough where I didn’t feel like she could sink it. We healed that up in 2004.”
And now, the two are thick as thieves.
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