Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey has reflected on the life lessons he gained during his time in Australia as an exchange student.
The 55-year-old Oscar winner spent a year Down Under in 1988, staying with a family in Warnervale, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
He said the experience shaped his life in more ways than one.
‘I learnt a lot about myself and who I wanted to be. Those are priceless memories and lessons I needed at that time in my life,’ he told Stellar magazine.
‘I wouldn’t change anything because living there made me who I am today, all those years later.’
During his year in Australia, McConaughey worked in various roles, including as a bank teller and legal assistant, a stark contrast to his privileged life in Texas, where he had been a straight-A student.
Matthew McConaughey has reflected on the life lessons he gained during his time in Australia as an exchange student
His love for Australia still runs deep – he returns whenever he can and even shot his 2008 movie Fool’s Gold in Port Douglas, Queensland.
The Interstellar actor appears to have changed his mind about life Down Under because in 2021, he recounted his life as an 18-year-old exchange student in regional Australia as a ‘livin’ hell’ in his plainspoken memoir.
McConaughey branded his little known experience as ‘torturous’, mocked a family that hosted him for their ‘nonsense’ and confessed to going through a ‘crisis’.
The Dallas Buyers Club star expected to live in paradise, imagining living near Sydney in a land of sun, beaches, surfing and supermodel Elle Macpherson.
But he said his vision of life Down Under didn’t match up with reality, according to a lengthy chapter of his autobiography, Greenlights.
McConaughey drew an unfavourable comparison between life back in Texas – where he was voted ‘Most Handsome’ at school, dated the ‘best looking girl’ in town and owned a red sports car – and his time on the Central Coast.
In 1988, teenage McConaughey landed in Sydney and found himself nicknamed ‘Macka’ – He was enrolled at an ‘awkward’ high school where he complained ‘everyone wore uniforms and played tag at lunch.’
‘No one wanted to party and the chicks were not digging me,’ he added.
The 55-year-old Oscar winner spent a year Down Under in 1988, staying with a family in Warnervale
McConaughey said the experience shaped his life in more ways than one and he wouldn’t change anything about it
In his retelling, he bristled against his adoptive family, kindly renamed ‘the Dooleys’, after finding out they didn’t live on the ‘outskirts of Sydney’ but rather down a dirt road, about 106km north of the city.
He was slapped with a curfew, instructed to keep his opinions to himself and worked six different jobs.
During this time, he underwent an introspective change.
McConaughey spent nine months abstinent – He became a vegetarian who shrunk to 58kg eating meals consisting of tomato sauce and iceberg lettuce.
He also wrote letters to himself, considered becoming a monk and ‘freeing Nelson Mandela.’
‘I was in the bathtub every night before sundown j**king off to (poet) Lord Byron and (U2 cassette) Rattle and Hum. Telling myself daily, I’m okay, I’m good. You got this, it’s just cultural differences.’
McConaughey couldn’t return home as he’d shaken hands on his exchange agreement and vowed to be true to his word.
He is known to have developed a lifelong love of cricket from his time here and maintained a relationship with at least one of the families who hosted him.
The veteran actor has starred in multiple Hollywood hits, including The Wedding Planner and Magic Mike, and he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club.
