Matthew McConaughey recalled how his mother, Kay McConaughey, supported him after he was arrested for playing bongo drums while naked and high in 1999.The 55-year-old actor detailed the notorious incident in his bestselling 2020 memoir, “Greenlights.” At last weekend’s Texas Book Festival, which featured McConaughey and Malcolm Gladwell as the headlining authors, the Oscar winner joined director Richard Linklater for a conversation about “Greenlights.”While speaking with Linklater, McConaughey remembered the advice Kay shared with him after the infamous arrest.“‘You go outside in front of that media, and you hold your head high,'” the Texas native recalled Kay telling him, according to People magazine.“‘I know what you were doing last night playing bongos, smoking that funny stuff in your birthday suit, and you’ve done it many times before.
And I know you’re going to do it again.'”McConaughey told Linklater, who directed the actor in his breakthrough movie, “Dazed and Confused,” that Kay had shared similar words of wisdom with him before.“‘Don’t walk into a place like you want to buy it, walk in it like you own it.’ She tells me that before we go to prom.She tells me that on the morning before I went in to go do a screen test for ‘A Time to Kill,’” he said.In “Greenlights,” McConaughey wrote that the arrest occurred after he attended a football game during which his alma mater’s team, the Texas Longhorns, squared off against the Nebraska Cornhuskers.After the Longhorns triumphed over the Huskers, McConaughey, who was 29 at the time, recalled that Austin was “on fire” and “it was time to celebrate.”“I partied through the night into Sunday, and through Sunday night without sleeping a wink,” he wrote.
“At 2:30 that Monday morning, I finally decided to wind down.It was time to lower the lights, get undressed, open up the window and let the jasmine scent from my garden come inside.“It was time to smoke ...