Inside Matthew McConaughey's Full Family World as a Father of 3 - E! Online (2024)

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Matthew McConaughey On What He's Learned from His Kids

Matthew McConaughey may have never gottenmarried if it hadn't been for his son Levi.

Not merelythanks to the child's existence, because by the time the Oscar winner asked for Camila Alves' hand they had been together for five years and were parentsto both Levi (in lieu of Matthew Jr. they went with the apostle Matthew's biblical alias) and his little sister, Vida("life" in her Brazilian mom's native Portuguese). They could've just kept livin' that way, and the livin' was great.

But in 2011, then-3-year-old Levi asked his dad why his mom's last name wasn't McConaughey, like everyone else in the family. And when his dad informed him that he and Levi's mother weren't married yet, thechild's reply was a simple, "Why not?"

Levi didn't put much stock in McConaughey's "well Iwantto but I don't feel Ineed to" explanation, the actor recalled in his 2020 memoirGreenlights, and just asked his father if he was afraid.

"I guess I am a little bit," McConaughey remembered admitting. When the boy askedwhathe was afraid of, the answer was, "...Of losing myself."

Of course, these weren'tjustbundles of joy.He and his wife had three whole humans to guide.

"It's so much more DNA than environment than I thought it was going to be," McConaugheytoldAnderson Cooperon CNN in 2020about raising his three kids."They are who they are, and we nudge them along, and we shepherd them, and we try to put what they love in front of them and keep them away from great harm. But boy, they are who they are right when they come into the world."

Let's not forget, though, where that DNA comes from, and the occasional glimpses that McConaughey and Alves have shared with the world show a trio who have embraced family, nature, adventure (their beloved Airstreamgets a lot of use) and, yes, that JKL attitude.

"Surf souvenirs," McConaughey captioned a March 2Instagram pic of Levi, referring to the bandages on the 15-year-old's back after an apparently eventful wave-riding session, his board still tucked under his arm. Obviously enjoying the bathing suit weather wherever they were on their winter sojourn, Levi was also wearing swim trunks while watching his dad (in shorts and a sleeveless tee)give 10-year-old Livingston a haircut, a pic of the snipsession posted by their mom on Feb. 26.

Alvesshared that Livingston wanted nothing more than a trip to Austin's Altitude trampoline park and an ice cream cake for hislatest birthday, whilefamily and friends—including dad'sTrue Detectiveco-star Woody Harrelson—gathered in January to celebrate Vida's 13th. (Alves wasbusy climbing a mountainwhen she turned 40 later that month, while her husband, a man of simple pleasures,indulged in a bowl of Fruity Pebbles on his 53rd birthdaylast November.)

Levi got he wanted for his 15th birthday July 7, too: Mom and Dad let him join Instagram. Which, mind you, was not a spur of the moment decision.

"We thought he was ready," McConaughey toldPeoplea couple months later. "After two to three years of talking about the pitfalls and the upfalls and the downfalls, and him shadowing me on my IGs and his mother on hers and picking out people that he looked up to and talking to them about it, we felt he's got enough information and is mature enough to tell his own story."

The actor also knows the importance of having one's own space as a child, recalling the tree house that served ashis refuge when he was a kid (and which inspired the one on the cover of his debut children's book,Just Because).

"Every child needs that," he told E! News in September. "Every child needs a journal or a diary that they can trust. 'Mom and Dad aren't going through that, that's mine, and [they're] not sharing everything with us.'"

Thissort of ultra-thoughtfulness accompanies pretty much everythingMr. and Mrs. McConaughey do as parents. And they've been honest about all the one-day-at-a-time work that goes into their idyllic-looking existence (now evidenced by threeInstagram accounts)behind the scenes.

"Camila and I are trying to teach our kids values," he said on Rich Roll,"but we do not say, 'because I said so,' as much as my parents did, or most of our parents did. We do try to explain things."

McConaughey described what was then a recent experience with Livingston talking back to his mother, and how he and Alves didn't stop trying to impress upon the kid why it wasn't OK until he trulygotit.

"You kinda want to let it slide and just go to bed and let 'em go to sleep," he explained. But not wanting to allow a wound to fester, "we've got to gather up the energy and sit down with our son and go, 'Do you understand why that's not allowable? This is your mother. She works her butt off, we work our butt off to give y'all a house, to give you a meal, to raise you and nudge you to be the young man that you can be, and you have to have respect and what you just did was disrespectful. If you're disrespecting her, you're disrespecting yourself, and you do not have the right to talk to you mother like that.'"

Yet so often shedoes totally have it.

McConaughey reminisced onRich Roll how his missus uncannily knew when he needed his alone time—and that she preferred he take it rather than deal with hisgot-to-get-away energy.

When it came time to gather up his journals and go somewhere without WiFi (or electricity, for that matter, minus his generator) to write his memoir, Alveslet him know it wasOK for him to disconnect and do so.

"She's like, 'Don't come back till you got something. However long that takes. We're good, I got the kiddos here, go,'" he explained. "It was a gift she gave me."

"Our family unit's gotten tighter," McConaughey reflected to Paradein October 2020. "The McConaugheys have been cooking and reading and making it a point to check in with one another. Every couple of weeks, we have to recalibrate and let everyone voice their frustrations at the dinner table and go, 'Well, let's talk about what pisses everyone off. What's everyone not liking about this?'"

Everyone's favorite Lincolnspokesman also found that he had a built-in crew of three whenever he needed to make a video or take some work photos from the confines of home.

"It would be kind of cool if I looked up in five years and the McConaughey clan, my two sons and my daughter, are their own production entity and we're going to market and advertise, do ads and PSAs and make movies together," McConaughey said. "That would be really cool."

And in case that sounded like a father projecting, he further described his kids' creative inclinations toPeople at the time, saying Vida was into graphic novels and loved to paint and draw, while Levi "basically came out of the womb knowing a minor from a major key on the piano." Alves, meanwhile, showed off Livingston'svideo editing skillson her Instagram, the then-9-year-old's workstitching together highlights from an Austin FC game (Dad's a minority owner of the pro soccer team) as good as any grown-up's.

So what, really, was McConaughey to do but take inspiration and expand his own creative horizons by writing a book for families?

"Kids are being told by the world that they need to be absolute about something,"he told E! about what he hopes children and parents get out of Just Because. "You know, 'What are you gonna do? What are you gonna be like?' 'Whoa, I'm a kid. Let me try some things out.' Or, you know, 'I'm excited about this, but I'm nervous and I'm confused, I feel both these things.'"

And, McConaughey continued, "That's cool. You can have dueling feelings. You can feel one way today about something and tomorrow feel a different way about the same situation. This starts to confuse us and confuse young people. It's saying 'Hey, that's okay. That's part of the poetry of living.' So there's a proper leniency in here I think will allow access for parents to talk to their kids and for kids to talk to their parents and say, 'Well, tell me about a situation you're in like that in your life, Mom, Dad'—and it opens the conversation to say, 'Hey, life's a lyric, it's poetry to live it.'"

As he wrote inGreenlights, "life is our résumé."And he'll keep acquiring experience—but, as a dad, he's already got the top job.

Read on to see Matthew McConaughey's sweetest family photos: