Matthew McConaughey he knows about going off the grid, but fans might be surprised to learn that he moved to Peru — and changed his name — in the ’90s to escape his fame and start over before becoming an even bigger star.
“I needed to put my feet down,” McConaughey, 56, recalled during the May 5 episode of the “No Magic Pill with Blake Mycoskie” podcast. But at the same time, I needed to be happy [that] suddenly the world was saying ‘yes’ to me.”
This actor became popular in the 1993s Surprised and Confusedhe noted that everyone knew his name after the success of 1996 Time to Killwhich led him to explore Hollywood and travel to Peru under the name Mateo.
“So I clicked. Boom. Go to Peru. I needed to find it – a validation test. I knew I had it, I had to prove it again,” McConaughey explained about his reason for going somewhere and becoming a different person.
He remembers, “But I asked, ‘Oh, OK, now that I’m famous, I’ve got all this and this and that and that,’ and I’m trying to figure out which part is real, which part is bulls***.”
McConaughey said his trip lasted 22 days — the length of time he usually goes off the grid — noting that the first 12 days were “tough.”
The last 10 days, however, were “good” and led the Oscar winner to know it was time to go back.
“I had been around long enough to go, ‘I can live this. This can be my existence,'” McConaughey said. As soon as you go, ‘I can do this,’ and you’re like, ‘I can go home.’
Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey in ‘A Time to Kill.’
The Everett CollectionIn retrospect, McConaughey explained that he chose to use a fake name while in Peru because, “When you become famous, what happens is a few greetings are skipped” and people stop asking your name or what you do.
“I needed to meet people who didn’t know me like Mateo. That was it,” he said. “And at the end of 22 days, the tears in their eyes and the tears in my eyes and the hugs we had because of the sadness and the joy of saying goodbye were all based on the man they met named Mateo, who had nothing to do with celebrities and the experiences and times we had together for 22 days.”
According to McConaughey, that experience “confirmed who I am, ‘Oh, I got it. This is based on me.'”
Matthew McConaughey shared another strange “wet dream” anecdote with his fans. In his newsletter Lyrics of Livin’ published on Friday, January 9, McConaughey, 56, explained how a dream in 2001 led him to become involved in a WWE-style wrestling match in a small African village. In the memoir McConaughey recalls sleeping in the […]
When McConaughey returned to Hollywood and had more success with rom-coms like Wedding Planner again How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and dramas like this Dallas Buyers Clubhis soul-searching journeys still happen from time to time. (He currently resides in his hometown of Texas.)
In fact, McConaughey revealed earlier on the podcast that he went solo to unplug while writing his book 2025, Poems and Prayerswhich includes meditation on the beauty and downfall of his life.
“I gathered all my diaries and my stews, water and tequila, and went to a place with no electricity in the middle of the desert,” McConaughey recalled, “where I was locked up with nothing but me and where I had been in my previous diaries.”
I A star star commented, “I learned on a previous trip that there is a period of initiation where we go with us when the demons on our backs dance and we have fun at our expense. When the guilt can be really hard. The shame can be hard.”
He scoffed, “And I know for myself, I don’t enjoy having you with me for a while when I take this trip.”
Like his 90s tour, McConaughey said that around the 12th day he “suddenly” had a “purge or wake up and say, ‘Okay, bro. What are we going to forgive? And what are we going to change?’
McConaughey concluded, “Instead of maybe whining about it or kicking and making our knuckles bleed over you, there’s progress.”
