Matthew McConaughey: Fatherhood After Stardom

 CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Talk to me about fatherhood, and what that means to you in the context of your life today, yourself as a son and yourself as a father?

MCCONAUGHEY: Yes. Well, when we have children, we literally become immortal. And there’s great humility in that, and we get more courageous. I know I have. And, as Bassam and Robi were talking about, she said she gets out of bed each day and keeps persisting for her children and grandchildren. I’m — you have children, you start making — for me, I start making legacy choices, choices that — where I can spend my time, where I can maybe give my talent to things that are going to outlive me, to things that — immortal finish lines, I think, are the things that we start to see when we become a parent. There’s things I know that I have started to see and try to live for, legacy things that I can leave behind. They’re going to be the truest extension of me and their mother in the world after we’re gone, hopefully. So, what things can I build now? What kind of man can I be now that will live on through my children long after me and hopefully generations after them?

AMANPOUR: You have been thinking a lot about that. And your book is very clear about many of those issues. And it starts with your parents and their love through their fighting and what you learned. So, I am interested in that, because, when you basically said — and they had sort of knock-down, drag-out fights, but they were desperately in love. They got married and divorced a couple of times. And yet you said that…

MCCONAUGHEY: To each other.

AMANPOUR: … you learned about love, not from you — to each other is what I meant. Sorry. You learned about love from them, but not necessarily from the hugs, but from the fighting. And I’m interested in that.

MCCONAUGHEY: Yes.

AMANPOUR: What did you learn from the fighting? Why did that give you hope?

MCCONAUGHEY: Yes, it’s a great question. And I have been asked it many times, because when I talk about the love that our family had, the love stories I tell are the ones that I shared in the book. There’s violence. There’s fights. Knives were pulled. Blood was dripped. And why do you tell those stories? And I have given it a lot of thought. And I believe it’s this. Those are the times where the love was so literally challenged, you thought — you hear those stories. I saw the fact of those stories, and you look, oh, this is where it all breaks down. This is where the story does not end well. This is where the love falls and falters. No. It never had a chance to falter. Like I said, the metaphor would be my mom and dad divorcing twice but marrying three times. Well, in the end, love won.