Cliff Notes – Hollywood legend stopped talking to mum for 8 years after she leaked stories
- Matthew McConaughey revealed he did not speak to his mother for eight years due to her leaking personal stories to the press, which he found distressing.
- The actor now feels closer to his mother, Kay, and has accepted her sassy nature, even joking about her comments on his films.
- McConaughey’s wife, Camila Alves, initially faced challenges in her relationship with Kay, but they have since developed a strong bond after a candid confrontation.
Hollywood legend stopped talking to mum for 8 years ‘after she leaked stories’
Matthew McConaughey didn’t speak to his mother for eight years (Picture: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
Esteemed American actor Matthew McConaughey has revealed he went almost a decade without speaking to his mother due to her constantly leaking stories about him to the press.
The How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days star, 55, has Irish roots and is the son of former kindergarten teacher Mary Kathleen and businessman James Donald McConaughey.
In a new interview, he reflected on how his relationship with his mother, known as Kay, now aged 93, has changed over the years, having once been forced to put themselves on a mother-son ‘hiatus’.
‘I’d say we’re closer now,’ Matthew admitted.
‘We had about an eight-year period where I had to have short conversations with her on our Sunday phone calls because she was sharing a lot of that information.’
The actor, who got his breakthrough in 1993’s Dazed and Confused, further explained to People: ‘I’d tell her something on Sunday between son and mum, and Tuesday I’d read about it in the news or see it in the local paper. She couldn’t help herself.’
The actor found that his mum was leaking stories about him to the press (Picture: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW)
After eight years, he finally felt ‘stable enough with [his] own position and fame’, making him feel like his mother could then ‘say whatever the hell she wants’.
‘It’s much more fun now,’ he quipped.
In the same interview, he poked fun at his mum’s ‘sassy’ nature, pointing to her and saying: ‘You know what she says after every single film? “Oh, so good! I see where you get it from”.’
And Kay has now managed to get a taste of her lifelong ambition of being on The Golden Girls, having secured a small role playing Matthew’s on-screen mother in The Lost Bus, a survival thriller that lands on Apple TV Plus on October 3.
Away from the cameras, Kay lives with Matthew, his wife of 13 years, Camila Alves, and their kids.
Thankfully, he and Kay, 93, are much closer now (Picture: L. Cohen/WireImage)
Matthew has been married to Camila Alves since 2012 (Picture: David Parry/PA Wire)
However, it took a while for Kay to form a close bond with her daughter-in-law, with the Brazilian-American model and designer, 42, previously revealing Kay would ‘test’ her.
‘She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends’ names; she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting [me] down a bit,’ she confessed on the Biscuits & Jam podcast.
Eventually, Camila had had enough, deciding to retaliate after extending an olive branch and inviting Kay on a work trip to Istanbul, where she continued to tell her son’s partner ‘all these stories and put all these things in [her] head’.
On how she snapped, she said: ‘So, I just flipped it on her and brought my spicy Brazilian, Latin side, and I let her have it.
‘I went back at her, and we had it back and forth, back and forth. And then at the end, she just looked at me, and she was like, “OK. Now you’re in”.’
Kay was once called out by Camila for ‘putting her down’ (Picture: Gary Miller/Getty Images)
Kay now lives with her son, his wife, and their three kids (Picture: Gary Miller/Getty Images)
Fortunately, the pair have been incredibly close since that day, as Camila says they now have ‘the most amazing relationship’ and she has ‘so much respect for her’.
Camila first met Matthew in 2006, and they got engaged in 2011, marrying in a private Catholic ceremony in June 2012 in Austin, Texas, where they still live.
The happy couple are proud parents to three children, Levi, Vida, and Livingston, with the Gentleman actor previously saying that ‘the only thing [he] ever knew [he] wanted to be was a father’.
He described fatherhood as ‘awe-inspiring’ to People in 2020, adding: ‘And it’s remained the pinnacle for me.’
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