Matthew McConaughey is speaking out to reveal why he decided to flee America for Peru in the early days of his Hollywood fame.
McConaughey Flees America
While appearing on the “No Magic Pill” podcast, McConaughey revealed that just when he started to get famous, he left America alone and fled to Peru for 22 days. He explained that he made this three-week journey so that he could fight the “demons” that he was battling at the time.
McConaughey, 56, recalled that when he first became famous, he thought to himself, “No strangers do I meet anymore. The world is a mirror. I was questioning… which part’s real and which part’s [expletive].”
This made McConaughey want to get away alone. Indeed, he packed up his journals, water, steak and tequila, and set off for Peru.
“Went to a place that had no electricity in the middle of the desert where I was locked in with nothing but me and who I’ve been in my past or my diaries,” McConaughey said. “The first 12 days were wonky. And then the last 10 days were great. I was at the place long enough to go, I could live this.”
“There’s an initiation period when we go away with ourselves. Yes,” the Oscar-winning star continued. “Where the demons on our back, man are, are dancing and having a good time at our expense, where the guilt can get really heavy. The shame can get heavy.”
McConaughey’s ‘Breakthrough’
McConaughey went on to admit that he did not enjoy his own company at the start of this journey.
“I do not enjoy my own company… at first,” he confessed. “For me, it’s around day 12… that’s when the breakthrough comes.”
McConaughey described this solo trip as being similar to a psychedelic journey like ayahuasca.
“We pull the parachute too early,” he concluded. “If it gets hot, we can handle breaking a sweat.”
McConaughey got his start in Hollywood in the early 1990s. His breakthrough role came when he played the easygoing David Wooderson in the 1993 comedy Dazed and Confused. While McConaughey did not reveal exactly when his Peru trip took place, it was likely soon after that, since that’s when he truly became a household name.
McConaughey’s Patriotism
Though he briefly fled America decades ago, he has since become a patriot who deeply loves this country. Indeed, over the past few years, he has even considered running for governor of the great state of Texas. Despite his success in Hollywood, McConaughey has decided to live in Texas instead of Los Angeles with his wife Camila Alves and their three children.
“I don’t know,” McConaughey told People Magazine in September of 2025 when he was asked about possibly running for governor of Texas. “Like I said, it’s something I started looking into probably six years ago and something I’ve continued to study what that arena is, what it would mean, how could I be useful in it, would I be useful in it?”
McConaughey added that politics is “not necessarily my language, but that would happen if and when it was something that I couldn’t not do. It would happen when I would look up and see that I’m pulled into it in a way that, ‘Oh, I have to.'”
In the far-left world of Hollywood, it’s rare to find a star as patriotic and down-to-earth as McConaughey is. We can certainly understand why he needed to take some time away when he started to become famous. However, we’re also very glad that he came back.
God bless you, Matthew McConaughey!