On a recent episode of The Conversation: About The Men podcast, Matthew McConaughey opened up about the traumatic experiences he had when he was younger. The Interstellar actor shared that he isn’t going to let these past experiences affect his relationships now.
“I’m not gonna be afraid of relationships because my first experience was blackmail. Uh uh. That’s an aberration,” McConaughey told host Amanda de Cadenet. “And I’m not gonna let it beat me … I’m not gonna let that beat my sense of trust in people and say, ‘No, I can have a healthy relationship.’ Non-negotiable. No.”
McConaughey detailed what he went through in his 2020 memoir Greenlights. “I was blackmailed into having sex for the first time when I was 15,” he wrote. “I was molested by a man when I was eighteen while knocked unconscious in the back of a van.”
On the podcast, McConaughey said, “Am I gonna carry that? I chose, non-negotiably, I’m not going to carry that, bring that baggage into the life I’m going to lead, and how I treat people and how I trust people, and how I look at circumstances and the risk I may take.”
The Dallas Buyers Club actor added that he hasn’t sought therapy for these experiences, but he’s had “very good friends” and “good mentors” to help him through.