Matthew McConaughey says he's 'working on the riddle of life' in new book 'Just Because'

Doing a little bit of everything comes with the territory of being a self-styled Renaissance man – even writing a children’s book when you’re A-list actor Matthew McConaughey.

So why did the star of “Interstellar,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Magic Mike,” the bestselling author of 2020 memoir “Greenlights” and the man who counts Socrates and Ralph Waldo Emerson among his favorite writers decide to write a picture book for children too young to have seen most of his movies?

It started, he says, with a dream.

“This book came to me in a dream. It was like a folk-song ditty. I woke up at 2:30 and just went and wrote it down. I thought it was a Bob Dylan ditty, which it kind of is,” says McConaughey, 53. His debut children’s book, “Just Because,” (Viking Books for Young Readers, 32 pp.,) is out Sept. 12.

“That’s how I think and dream, in song and rhythm.”

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The result is a collection of rhyming couplets organized around the words “Just because,” each page and its accompanying illustrations, drawn by Renée Kurilla, their own self-contained life lesson. McConaughey’s brand of folksy wisdom lends itself to the sing-song poetry of children’s verse.

“Just because I let go, doesn’t mean that I stopped climbing,” McConaughey writes, the words floating above a young skateboarder swooping up a ramp. “Just because I mean it, doesn’t mean that I’m not lying,” he writes above the image of a sad-looking girl trying to paint a picture of a smiling sun.  

“It’s about the poetry of life, instead of having the pressure on us that feels like we’re told every day that we need to be absolute about every single thing,” McConaughey says of his book, which illustrates the contradictions and complexities that exist in each of us. “That’s not really life. Life’s much more poetic, odd, ironic. Once you admit all these contradictions, life becomes much more of a poem.”

Some of McConaughey’s couplets bend philosophical, with lessons that will hit the parents reading aloud to their children harder than the children themselves: “Just because I forgive you, doesn’t mean that I still trust./ There’s what you do, there’s what I do, and yours is not my must.”

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“You don’t have to do what I do, and I don’t have to do what you do. What’s true for you? Great. May not be true for me. And that’s OK,” he says. “It’s a place of amnesty, of proper leniency that I hope kids and adults can have for others without the judgment of, ‘Well if you don’t believe what I believe, then we’re against each other.’”

While the book is written at a child’s comprehension level, he hopes “Just Because” will spark deeper conversations between parents and children. “I could talk for hours about any of these couplets in my own life, in adult life, in our nation, in America.”

In America, it’s a culturally and politically contentious time for books, especially those written for children and young adults. In 2022, the American Library Association recorded more book-banning attempts than ever before in the 20 years since it began keeping data. Political and parents’ groups have especially targeted books by people of color or with LGBTQ+ themes in an effort to get them removed from classrooms and school libraries.  

Such groups are unlikely to target McConaughey’s anodyne book. But the actor, who’s gotten more politically engaged in recent years, speaking out on issues such as gun control and the Second Amendment, doesn’t entirely yet know where he stands on the issue.

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“Well, I think we have to admit there’s a difference between access and promotion,” McConaughey says. “We’re at a time when we’re debating what should be taught. Who is the history written by? What is the truth of the matter?” He adds: “I’m not one for saying any book should be burned, banned, done with. But there’s a difference between access and what’s in a curriculum, and that’s something to discuss.”

Finding common ground and compromise without betraying one’s self is a lesson McConaughey continues to learn as he parents his growing children – Levi, 15; Vida, 13; and Livingston, 10 – whom he shares with wife Camila Alves. They are at ages where they’re making decisions for themselves, sometimes decisions McConaughey himself wouldn’t make.

“Before having children, I thought it was 70% environment, 30% DNA. And boy, as soon as you have them, it’s like, ‘Oh, you are who you are already.’ I can shepherd you, I can put in front of you what turns you on and will feed you and make you more healthy and help you become more you,” he says. “But you are who you are.”

And McConaughey continues to be who he is, which is a bit of everything. Looking ahead at his myriad career possibilities – whether it’s more movies and books, philanthropy or even politics – what excites McConaughey right now?

“I think I’m most useful when I’m having fun doing what I’m doing. I’ve gotten to an age now where I know that if I let myself have fun doing something, I don’t become reckless, I don’t become irresponsible, I don’t become a tyrant,” McConaughey says. “I’m working on the riddle of life, and that riddle excites the heck out of me.”

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• "Just Because" at Amazon for $18
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