Matthew McConaughey Reveals That He Was Sexually Abused Multiple Times as a Teenager

The “The Gentlemen” star recently released his new memoir and he has looked back at some of his most difficult experiences during his teenage years and reflected on how they affected him.

The 50-year-old actor recently penned a memoir he titled “Greenlights,” and he is currently on a virtual book tour to promote it. In the book, Matthew McConaughey digs into his past, and it is not just good memories.

There is a part of the book, released on October 20, 2020, on which McConaughey opens up about the sexual abuse he was subject to as a teenager, briefly citing a couple of episodes.

SHARING DIFFICULT MEMORIES

"I was blackmailed into having sex for the first time when I was fifteen. I was certain I was going to hell for the premarital sex. Today, I am merely certain that I hope that’s not the case,” the star revealed.

McConaughey also recalls having been “molested by a man” at the age of eighteen while he was unconscious inside of a van. But apart from citing these troubling interactions, he didn’t go into detail about it.

BLESSED IN MANY WAYS

Today, as McConaughey looks back on his life, he shares that he has “never felt like a victim,” and, on the contrary, he has counted his blessings and he has strong reasons to believe that “the world is conspiring to make [him] happy.”

Not only he has reached to the top of Hollywood’s royalty, first becoming a romantic comedy icon in the 2000s and then reinventing himself as an Award-winning dramatic actor, but he has also fulfilled his biggest dream: becoming a father.

In 2012, McConaughey married Brazilian-American model Camila Alves, and they share three children together: Livingston, 7, Vida, 10, and Levi, 12. As the actor recently told Howard Stern, they are the absolute most important part of his life.

WRITING PROCESS

Back in August, 2020, months ahead of the release of “Greenlights,” McConaughey shared how the process of writing the memoir went, revealing that he has kept a diary for the past 36 years and that a trip to the desert provided him with the opportunity he was waiting for to sit an put his memories in order.

“I went away to the desert by myself for 52, no electricity,” McConaughey told People magazine, also mentioning the important role his wife had in his determination to give his memories book form.

“You’ve been talking about sitting down with those [diaries] for 36 years and seeing what it is for a while. Now’s the time. Get out of here,” McConaughey quoted his wife of eight years with saying.

Upon reading through his journals during his book-writing retreat, McConaughey came up with the traffic light theme that inspired the title of his book, as he saw the events of his life in different lights according to how happy or sad they were.

“I noticed many red lights and yellow lights that I had in my life earlier, that with time turned green,” the “Dallas Buyers Club” star summarized, and he applied the criteria to the current COVID-19 pandemic, describing it as a time of yellow and red lights.