Matthew McConaughey has opened up about his little-known past in Australia, revealing that his brief stint as an exchange student taught him life lessons that have stayed with him ever since.
The Oscar winner, 55, spent a year Down Under in 1988, staying with a family in Warnervale, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
The Hollywood hunk admitted that his experience immediately jolted him to reality.
“I learnt a lot about myself and who I wanted to be,” he told Stellar magazine. “Those are priceless memories and lessons I needed at that time in my life.”
During that year, the then-18-year-old threw himself into any work opportunities he could find, including jobs as a bank teller and legal assistant, in order to make ends meet.
His reality was a far cry from the life he lives back home in Texas, where McConaughey had been a straight-A student and was voted “most handsome” at school.
“I wouldn’t change anything because living there made me who I am today, all those years later,” he added.
It seems as though the actor has changed his tune about his experience of living in Australia, as in his 2021 memoir, “Greenlights,” McConaughey called his time there a “livin’ hell.”
The actor even went as far as calling his experience “torturous,” adding, “No one wanted to party and the chicks were not digging me.”
Still, McConaughey acknowledged that his host family was “kind-hearted” and “generous,” adding that the vital life lesson he learned was that “we have to be thrown off balance to find our footing.”
These days, the “Interstellar” star resides on a ranch in his home state of Texas with his wife, Camila Alves, and their three children Levi, 17, Vida, 15, and Livingston, 12.
“We practice gratitude every day,” McConaughey told the outlet of his family’s life in the Lone Star State.
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“We make it a point to get comfortable being uncomfortable. In the end, staying grounded means caring for yourself, caring for those around you, and giving back whenever you can.”
Alves, for her part, told the outlet that “the combination of fun and structure [McConaughey] brings keeps [the children] confident and grounded.”
Prior to moving to Texas, the couple — who wed in 2012 — were living in Malibu, Calif.
At the time, the actor became a household name after starring in a series of successful rom-coms, including, “How to Lose A Guy In 10 Days,” “The Wedding Planner,” “Failure to Launch,” and “Fool’s Gold.”
