Who knew that in addition to being a rom-com hero, award-winning dramatic actor and cute-as-all-get out- Matthew McConaughey has written a satisfying memoir as well. Drawn from personal diaries and journals kept since his teens, McConaughey’s window into the world at large and his own (also pretty darn large!) is a surpirsingly affable read with insights that, while not necessarily new to this near-septugenarian, are nevertheless confirmation of a life well contemplated.
The title, Greenlights, is a metaphor for the actor’s philosophy that there those times in life when we just know that we are in the right place and the right time. Serendipity, perfectly-timed coincidences, confirmation from unexpected sources greenlight forward movement. Yellow and even red lights give us the opportunity to pause, regroup and keep faith that our goals, not yet in hand, might still out there waiting for us to catch up. The author recounts spiritual quests that take him from the Amazon to shamans in Africa. Determined to stretch his acting chops and be seen as more than a pretty face, McConaughey turned down scripts for two years until better ones began coming his way. His role in Dallas Buyers Club earned him an Oscar in 2014 for Best Performance. By coincidence, Emma and I recently watched Interstellar, an apocalyptic sci-fi movie in which McConaughey plays an astronaut determined to slip through a worm hole in order to save the world. The movie was better than this description would have you believe.
I’ll leave you with a facsimile from one of McConaughey’s teen journal entries.
