Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey shared the real reason he moved from California to rival Texas in 2014: a family crisis.
The “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Magic Mike” star moved his wife and three children from Malibu to the Lone Star State in 2014 and spoke about the decision in a profile in Southern Living this week. They shed light on what the magazine described as McConaughey's “homefield advantage” and what others might call a “Texodus.”
“The ritual came back,” the 54-year-old said, “whether it was Sunday church, sports, having dinner together as a family every night or staying up after that telling stories in the kitchen, sitting at the island serving drinks.” and nibbling while retelling them all in different ways than we told them before.”
The Texas native fervently believes in the theory – to the extent that he wants to conduct studies on it – that the closer we get to the site of our conception (not the place of birth, but the place where we are physically conceived), the more “ totally ourselves” we are. become, hooking the person to their “original essence.” (Isn't that the most typical Los Angeles thing you've heard today?)
McConaughey appears to be patient zero for testing the theory while living in the middle of America. The actor was interviewed about two miles from Fort Davis, Texas, where his parents, Kay and Jim McConaughey, conceived him in early 1969. And life is good, creativity flows and even his “metabolism flies,” he said. he.
“We lived a happy life in Malibu,” his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, said in the joint interview. “We had a beautiful house that we built together and we put a lot of love and care into it. We were raising our children there. He was growing everything in the garden. “I had bees making honey.”
However, the McConaughey family faced a crisis that led them to move to Austin to help their mother, who now lives with them, and two brothers for several weeks. (Although they did not reveal the timing or nature of the crisis, the couple purchased a 10,800-square-foot Austin-area mansion in 2012 and appeared to make the move permanent in 2020 when they sold their $15 million Malibu estate of dollars).
Before moving, the protagonist of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” had to convince his wife, a model and businesswoman born in Brazil who had only lived there, in New York and Los Angeles. At first she didn't have the same connection to Texas, but she quickly noticed a change in her husband during her brief stay.
“The gravity is very different in Texas,” he said, explaining that McConaughey seemed lighter, gentler and freer. Noticing that change one day while he was driving, she asked him if she wanted to come back. He immediately agreed. To that, she responded: “Son of a bitch…”.
Despite her initial reaction, Alves McConaughey soon realized that she was familiar with the state's physical and cultural landscapes because they echoed her own upbringing in the countryside of Minas Gerais, where she grew up saying “Yes, ma'am” and “Yes.” , Sir”. ”
“It reminds me of how I was raised,” he said, adding, “In Texas, we went to the church we like to attend every Sunday. “Sports became a stronger tradition for children…”
“Ritual!” McConaughey chimed in, before explaining how the ritual came back into their lives.
“Time slowed down,” he added. “The clock was fine, the biological clock. And part of that is ritual; Part of that is simply the distance between places and the way people move. But it is also hospitality, courtesy, common sense, lack of drama.”
Since moving, the “Mud” actor has become something of a mascot for his home state. According to Southern Living, he is in the stands cheering on the football team at his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin (where he also teaches a film course); he teamed with country legend George Strait on an anti-litter PSA; and briefly considered a run for governor in 2021. He also represented the state during a visit to the White House in 2022 after the Uvalde Elementary School shooting and narrated the 2022 documentary “Deep in the Heart.” Now, he and Alves McConaughey are marketing their tequila brand, Pants, which they source across the border in Jalisco, Mexico.
Like the McConaugheys, more than 100,000 Californians moved to Texas in 2022, compared to about 40,000 who did the opposite, according to US census data analyzed by The Times in 2023. By the way, a recent poll showed that the people of California and the people of Texas, the two most populous states in the United States, do not differ as much as their respective liberal and conservative governments, a poll conducted by YouGov for the Los Angeles Times among approximately 1,600 California and Texas residents.
Alves McConaughey seemed to have a big objection to life in Southern California, previously saying that he prefers to live away from the spotlight.
“We lived in Malibu for many years and having paparazzi outside our door every day, every day, when that becomes normal, you don't realize how much that affects the things you do until you actually go away and get out of it.” , he told Fox News Digital in 2022. “Children have a private way of growing up. So from that perspective, it was very important.”
