Matthew McConaughey Details Fun-Filled Birthday, Plus: He Opens Up About ‘Greenlights’

Matthew McConaughey just turned 51 and he's telling “Extra's” Rachel Lindsay how he celebrated his birthday, as well as dishing on his book “Greenlights” and revealing whether he would ever get into politics.

As for how 51 feels, he smiled and said, “I feel like I thought, say, when I was 20, I feel like I thought what 38 would feel like… Feel good.”

He spent the day with his family yesterday, including wife Camila Alves and their children, daughter Vida, 10, and sons Levi, 12, and Livingston, 7. He shared a sweet compilation video of them singing “Happy Birthday” to him over the years on social media. Matthew said, “We're all good. We had a great day yesterday.”

He continued, “That was my wakeup yesterday. It was a wonderful alarm… I spent the first 30 minutes by myself. I spent the next four hours with my wife. We did not come out to greet everyone in the rest of the house till after noon, made a big lunch, ate outside, turned the music up loud.”

McConaughey added, “There was dancing in the daylight. We had a great dinner last night, watched a show, and were down by 11.”

He was celebrating his new book as well. “Green Lights” features stories and insights from his life in chronological order. “I went away to the desert with 36 years of my journals that I have been keeping,” he said. He found “green lights” in his life — hence the title — and “they affirm our way… We don't really like the yellow and red lights cause they make us pause… I believe that all the red and yellow lights in our lives eventually do turn green.”

He was working with a ghostwriter three years ago who got pulled from the project. The Oscar winner knew it was his time to write it himself, saying it wasn't hard.

“I had already admitted them to myself on a page, I just had to write them in better form to put them in a book…The hardest part for me, to be honest, was how much I enjoyed it.”

He gets candid about his life, calling his childhood, “bloody, ugly, and sometimes violent.”

“When I got in trouble in my household, we didn't get in trouble, we got whooped… There was clarity. I don't remember any pain of the belt; I remember my dad's broken heart that I lied to him… 'Don't hate, don't lie, don't say you can't…' There were values instilled in the lessons. Those are the values I still try to instill in my children.”

The actor shared what's important to him right now, “Our way out of these times, cultural revolution, COVID times, the divide is through the simplicity… double back down on our values.”

After hearing all that, Rachel asked if Matthew would ever consider getting into politics. He said, “If politics found its purpose again, sure; right now, politics doesn't know it's purpose.”