The Three Strange Rules Matthew McConaughey Insists Be Followed

Now, you might wonder how your experience of the world could possibly align with that of a Hollywood star. For starters, your bank balance is probably not even close to being in the same league. That means your family won’t have the same luxuries and spoils, of course. But trust us on this: you’ll want to pay attention to McConaughey’s rules. Even if it’s just to hear how unusual they are!

Why? Well, the 52-year-old Oscar winner has lived quite a life. He also has three children: 12-year-old Levi, 10-year-old Vida and 8-year-old Livingston. And, sure, having millions of dollars in the bank will help raise those kids in practical terms. But that green won’t take care of the children’s hearts and minds. That’s where McConaughey’s rules come into their own.

Because it’s clear that McConaughey has put a lot of thought and hard-won experience into his philosophies. Like, one of the challenges that his children face is getting sneered at for having famous parents. But instead of advising his kids to simply ignore these taunts, McConaughey tells them, “Don’t bow your head.” And the reason why is very illuminating.

According to McConaughey, the kids should be unashamed of their upbringing – and they should face up to their detractors. “Look up and go, ‘Yeah, we do actually live in a nice house. My dad works really hard to be as good as he can at his job,’” McConaughey said on The Oprah Conversations. As you can see, it’s definitely worth listening to any advice he has to give!

After all, it’s not easy spending 30 years carving a path to being among Hollywood’s top leading men. And McConaughey’s route to stardom has actually informed the rules that he lives by. You see, the then-film student would take opportunities where he found them and make of them what he could. Even his big-picture debut came about by pure chance – and the experience taught him a lot.

At the time, McConaughey was a film student at the university of his hometown in Austin, Texas. He went to the Hyatt hotel bar one night, as he once recalled to Newsweek, because “the bartender there gave [him] free drinks because he was in [McConaughey’s] film-school class.” McConaughey then met the casting director for cult-classic Dazed and Confused – and suddenly the world was paying attention to him.

McConaughey was yet to bless us with his three strange rules, of course – but the world still embraced him. The young actor scored regular acting gigs for the next few years, too. Yet it was after his performance as a lawyer in Joel Schumacher’s gritty courtroom drama A Time To Kill that the Texan’s star really began to rise.

That was the movie in which McConaughey received his first top-billing credit, alongside co-stars Samuel L. Jackson and Sandra Bullock. But the actor was still a way off becoming one of Hollywood’s top leading men, which is the status he enjoys today. In fact, that switch came about thanks to a hard rule he imposed upon himself. He’s undoubtedly passed this on to his kids, too.

Throughout the ’90s, you see, McConaughey scored hard-hitting roles in the likes of Contact, Amistad and The Newton Boys. He worked with directors such as Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard. Co-stars included Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and Dennis Hopper. But by the early 2000s, the mood had changed – and so had McConaughey.

At the turn of the millennium, McConaughey had become renowned as a leading man in rom-coms. His biggest hits were The Wedding Planner, alongside Jennifer Lopez, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, with Kate Hudson. This in itself wasn’t a problem for the actor. But he was worried that Hollywood studios were starting to see him as a one-trick pony. So he came up with a rule.

“I look up and notice I’m rom com, romantic comedy guy. And I’m owning this because I’m like, ‘You’re damn right, those rom coms are paying for the house that I’m renting on the beach that I’m going shirtless on.’ [I’m] guilty of that, you know?” McConaughey recalled to Social Authentic Media in April 2021. So that didn’t bother the actor at all. It was something else.

“I did notice, ‘Well, I wanna do some other things.’ ‘No, no, no, no, you can’t do that.’ And… I was like, ‘Oh, the industry and the public are nothing other than rom-com shirtless guy on the beach,’” McConaughey continued. Yep, the perceptive actor saw that they were the roles everyone expected him to do. He’d been typecast. So he needed to make a rule – and stick to it.

McConaughey knew it would take a different approach to change course. So he decided to start turning down all of the rom-com offers and move back to Texas. Yet Hollywood did its very best to make McConaughey break his self-imposed rule. Over the next two years, in fact, the amount of money offered to the actor was insane!

Yep, the actor was still getting parts offered to him: for more rom-coms. So he had to turn down one role worth $8 million. And he refused the same gig three more times – even after the studio upped the offer to $14.5 million! But by turning down the big bucks – and sticking to his rule – McConaughey knew Hollywood had to take him seriously.

McConaughey’s bullishness ultimately paid off. He went on to star in 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club and earned a SAG award, an Oscar and a Golden Globe. And beyond his acting talents, he was recognized among the 100 “Most Influential People in the World” in 2014, according to Time magazine. So when he speaks, we listen.

After all, it takes guts to turn down such vast sums – especially when he had no problems with rom-coms anyway! How did he do it? Well, self-discipline is something his parents instilled in him at a young age – and something he wants to pass on to his own kids, of course. That’s why he has the rules.

But to say McConaughey’s parents were strict with him may be an understatement. Some might regard the way he was treated by his parents as abuse. In fact, the actor put some of his formative childhood stories in his memoir, Greenlights, and the recollections caused a certain amount of controversy.

As McConaughey explained to Sunday TODAY host Willie Geist, “I tell these stories that are bloody and ugly and sometimes violent. And I think the reason I tell them is that those were times where the love that we had — that was never in question — was most challenged, but never had a chance of being beat.”

In a separate interview with Southern Living, McConaughey recalled one such incident. “I answered to Matt one time when I was in kindergarten when my mom was my teacher. My buddy goes, ‘Hey, Matt! Wanna play on the monkey bars?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and ran to the monkey bars... and next thing I know I feel a hand on my shoulder pull me back and body-slam me to the ground – and it was my mother.”

“She says to me, ‘What’s your name?’” he continued. “I said, ‘Matthew,’ and she goes, ‘Why did you answer to Matt?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, I knew he was talking to me!’ Then she said, ‘Don’t you ever answer to that again – I named you Matthew on purpose.’ So if anyone calls me Matt I know they either don’t know me well, or they’re jacking with me.”

But McConaughey was quick to dismiss any suggestion that his parents were abusive. He told Sunday TODAY, “Is it really fair for someone else to say that, if the person who is actually sane and very conscious of what happened says, ‘No, it wasn’t’?” But that’s not to say there was no heavy-handedness in the actor’s upbringing.

“I’m not in denial of it,” McConaughey continued. “My mom and dad are not in denial of it. So I don’t know that it’s really fair for someone to tell someone else, ‘Oh, you’ve been victimized and you were abused,’ if that person goes, ‘No, no, I wasn’t. That isn’t how I took it.’” But when it comes to his own family, McConaughey does things a little differently.

In fact, the way in which he interacts with his wife and kids is directly influenced by his parents and how they treated him. So, when it comes to his own children, the 51-year-old is inclined to open up a dialogue rather than clench up his fists. And that’s where his three rules prove so useful.

“I don’t raise my children the same way my parents raised me,” McConaughey told Sunday TODAY. “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.” Then the actor went on to explain his own, more understanding approach to teaching his children right from wrong.

“I choose in our family to have much more dialogue than my parents choose or their parents [chose],” he said. “My wife and I do a little more explaining. ‘Okay, let’s debate this out.’ And even today, my mom goes, ‘Geez, y’all talk about it too much.’” But McConaughey also revealed what he won’t tolerate from his children.

McConaughey, he explained to Oprah, demands “respect and trust within the household.” Yet despite the open discourse between them and their children, the actor and his wife have banned certain words and phrases from their vocabulary. This approach informs three golden rules which the kids – and presumably everybody else – must follow.

“We do not allow lying in the house,” McConaughey told Oprah. “You cannot say the word[s] ‘I can’t,’ and you can’t use the word ‘hate.’” And if those rules are broken, there will be consequences. “Those three [things] will get you in big trouble in our house. Lying, saying, ‘I can’t,’ or saying ‘I hate,’” the Oscar-winner said.

His rules no doubt create a certain atmosphere in the household. But McConaughey is equally as mindful of the way he conducts himself within the family unit. It’s a subject the actor broached in conversation with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris in Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch in November 2020.

“If I even raise my voice in our household, I immediately have an alarm that goes off that says, ‘All right, McConaughey, what did you not handle getting to this point that you had to raise your voice?’” the actor explained. McConaughey described how he “start[s] doing inventory very quickly if [he] get[s] to where maybe [his] remark will be sharp.”

Why? For the Dallas Buyers Club star, what he wants from his kids is a balance between an awareness of their privilege and a humility and gratitude for it. He is raising his children to be mindful of their dad’s status and that they are better off than most. All the same, he wants Levi, Vida and Livingstone to grow up with strong values.

“We’re successful. We have a nice house. People notice us. Our kids get that,” he explained. “But we don’t want our children, nor do we allow ourselves, to go, ‘Oh, well that’s where my value lies – in the amount of money I have in my bank account or the fact that I’m famous.’” What McConaughey wants for his children are solid, core values.

“My hope is that they become autonomous, conscientious, competent young people in their life,” he said. And this is an attitude that has seemingly had a ripple effect in the wider community. As previously mentioned, the actor attended the 2015 graduation ceremony at the University of Houston as a guest speaker.

In his opening remarks, McConaughey drew on his experience to guide 4,000 graduates on their own paths. And among the actor’s nuggets of wisdom was some advice on success. He suggested that it doesn’t come easily, that there’s no barometer other than your own, and that it still needs work once it has been achieved.

The actor’s own definition of success comes from having a positive influence as a father and husband, keeping in good physical shape, and trying to foster good friendships and a fulfilling career. “I want to keep all five in healthy shape. If I don’t keep maintenance on them, one of them is going to get weak,” he told the graduates.

“As soon as the work, the daily making of the movie, the doing of the deed, became the reward in itself for me I got more box office, more accolades, more respect than I ever had before,” he said. Joy should therefore be in the process, not the outcome.

“A roof is a man-made thing,” McConaughey said. What does that mean? Essentially, the only limitations to success are those we set for ourselves. Now that doesn’t mean things will always be easy: there will be mistakes and setbacks. But that’s okay. Don’t dwell on them, and don’t make them your limitations.

One of McConaughey’s key takeaways centered on expectations. “Life’s not easy. Life is not easy. It is not. Don’t try to make it that way. Life’s not fair, it never was, it isn’t now, and it won’t ever be,” he said. “Do not fall into the trap – the entitlement trap – of feeling like you’re a victim. You are not. Get over it, and get on with it.”

McConaughey emphasized the importance of setting yourself up for success. “Tee yourself up. Do yourself a favor. Make the choices, the purchase today that pays you back tomorrow,” he said. It was a fitting conclusion. After all, this approach was exactly what gave the actor the opportunity to move on from the rom-com phase of his career.

The actor told Oprah that his children have learned kindness from his rules, too. And if they continue to follow their father’s guidance they’re sure to be – as his Dazed and Confused character would surely have put it – “all right, all right, all right.” But then it’s always been clear how much McConaughey’s kids mean to him.

Sure, over the past 25 years, McConaughey has established himself as one of the biggest names in Hollywood. But away from his films, the charming Texan is all about being a father to his three children. And while he relatively rarely talks about his family, the actor has revealed the moving story behind his son’s name.

The story goes back to at least 2012, a year prior to his success at the Oscars. That’s when McConaughey married his Brazilian-born bride, Camila Alves. The actor had first encountered the model in 2006 at a Los Angeles nightclub, where McConaughey claims that Alves was initially pretty coy towards him.

Somehow, though, after the pair had chatted in the club, McConaughey persuaded Alves to come back to his house. The Brazilian agreed to spend the night in the actor’s guest room but refused all his other advances, mind you, even denying him a goodnight kiss.

Describing what had happened when he awoke the next morning, in 2017 McConaughey told Howard Stern that he’d found Alves “holding court with [his] buddies and... housekeeper, eating breakfast like they’d been buddies for ten years.” He added, “There [was] no walk of shame. She stayed over, and she knows who she is.”

From that moment, McConaughey knew that he wanted Alves to be a part of his life. However, it would take him three attempts to secure a date with her. So in order to seal the deal, he treated the model to a home-cooked meal – a gesture that he claims finally won her heart.

Two years after their fateful meeting, McConaughey and Alves then welcomed their firstborn into the world: a baby boy named Levi. And the couple subsequently added to their brood in 2010 when they welcomed their daughter, Vida. Their third child, another son, this time named Livingston, was born in 2012.

Since becoming a father, McConaughey has spoken fondly of his three kids in interviews. However, in July 2017 the star gave a unique insight into his family when he revealed the poignant inspiration behind his first child’s name.

During an appearance on Good Morning America, McConaughey divulged that his boy Levi had recently turned nine. And as the actor continued to mention his other children, host Matthew Strahan commented, “I love the names, man.”

Responding to Strahan’s compliment, McConaughey explained, “Well, Levi’s got a great source material. Levi’s another name for Matthew in the Bible. And so we had talked about possibly Matthew Jr. if we had a boy.”

However, that moniker hadn’t sat comfortably with the dad-to-be. “I didn’t want him to be Matthew because I thought it would be Matthew Jr,” McConaughey explained. So, he and Alves came up with some alternatives. “Levi was one of six possible boy names,” the actor revealed.

Since at this stage the couple had no idea whether they were having a boy or a girl, they decided to leave picking a name until their baby arrived. Picking up his story there, McConaughey continued, “He’s born; we found out he’s a boy when he’s born; you’re not thinking about the name, right?”

However, shortly after their son’s birth, McConaughey and Alves received a major sign regarding their baby’s future name. “An hour later, the doctor comes up, and they hand you that card that you fill out… ‘Blank was born at 6:22 p.m.,’” McConaughey went on.

For McConaughey, the time of his son’s birth really stood out. “My favorite book of the Bible is Matthew 6:22,” he revealed. And, recounting a verse from his preferred section of the holy book, he explained, “If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light.”

Given the significance of his baby’s arrival time, McConaughey knew that there was only one name suitable for his firstborn. Describing his and Alves’ reaction, the actor said, “We went, ‘It’s Levi.’ So, that’s how he got his name.”

Going on to talk about the origin of his other children’s names, McConaughey revealed that he and Alves had had a much easier time settling upon their daughter’s moniker. “Vida, we always knew we wanted it,” the Dallas Buyers Club star explained.

Meanwhile, the couple’s third child also has an interesting story behind his name. “Livingston got his name because I’ve met a couple of Livingstons in my life, and they were men that if you saw them from 200 yards away just walking, you’d go, ‘That man’s got a great constitution,’” McConaughey explained.

With that in mind, then, McConaughey and Alves believed “Livingston” would make the perfect name for their son. “I’d never heard Livingston as a first name, and I always thought it was really cool, so we said Livingston Alves McConaughey,” the actor disclosed.

So, while celebrity baby names are often headline-grabbing, one star, at least, has put a fair bit of effort into giving his children meaningful monikers. That said, we’re sure that as they grow older, the Alves-McConaughey kids will eventually make their names their own.