Matthew McConaughey Opens up About Being Molested and Blackmailed Into Sex

Matthew McConaughey shared more about a difficult period of his life in a new podcast episode. The Oscar-winner discussed being molested by a man when he was 18 and being blackmailed into having sex as a teenager. McConaughey, 52, mentioned this situation in his book Greenlights, but he spoke more candidly about how those incidents shaped his understanding of healthy sexual relationships in the new episode of Amanda de Cadenet’s The Conversation: About the Men podcast.

The topic came up when McConaughey discussed the first time he learned about consent and what his father taught him about sexual intimacy. He was “guided” by his parents about “respect for a woman, respect for the relationship, respect for sexual intimacy, respect for space,” the Interstellar star recalled, via Entertainment Tonight. One day, his father asked him if he was getting to “that age you kiss” and explained that it would go further one day.

“He said, ‘You’re getting that age you kiss?’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir,’” McConaughey told de Cadenet. “And he goes, ‘Well, it’s gonna go further than that one day. It’s probably gonna go to where you’re gonna get intimate and there’s gonna be the breast, and there’s gonna be below the belt.’ I’m paraphrasing, and he goes, ‘It’s gonna happen to you as well.’” His father told him that if a girl told him no, he should stop and “Trust you’ll have another day if it is to be.”

Lessons like that helped McConaughey understand what a healthy sexual relationship was and that being blackmailed into sex at 15 was not. “But I was very clear, again, that was not right, that was not cool, that was not the way it is,” he said. “After that, I got to have some healthy sexual relations and have girls that I liked and liked me, and we slowly got intimate and it was beautiful and clumsy, and all those things, but it wasn’t ugly like that was.”

When he was molested at 18, McConaughey didn’t instantly connect the two incidents. “I didn’t connect ’em,” he said. Although he did not go to therapy to work through his past traumas, he has had many friends, mentors, elder men and women, and married couples who have helped him. “I never quit believing in the things my mom and dad were teaching me in the middle of finding out, ‘Oh, maybe they were hypocritical about what they were teaching and what they were actually doing,’” he said.

McConaughey said he never had the “option” to dwell on his trauma because he believed in people too much to be afraid of his past. “I’m not gonna be afraid of relationships because my first experience was blackmail. Uh uh. That’s an aberration. No, no,” he told de Cadenet. “That’s not the way it is. And if I go on — and I’m not gonna let it beat me. I’m going, ‘I’m not gonna let that beat my sense of trust in people and say, ‘No, I can have a healthy relationship.’ Non-negotiable. No.”

The actor knows this may sound like he is denying what happened, but he is not. “Am I denying that it happened? No. I’m not denying that it happened. Ugly. Ugh,” he said. “I still get, even telling you this story, I get… but am I gonna carry that? I chose, non-negotiably, I’m not going to carry that, bring that baggage into the life I’m going to lead, and how I treat people and how I trust people, and how I look at circumstances and the risk I may take.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.