Matthew McConaughey’s wife, Camila Alves, is dumbfounded over the perception of her husband’s stoner-like personality in Hollywood.
“When we first started dating, it was this image of Matthew of getting high, laid-back, no shirt, whatever,” Alves, 41, said on the Tuesday, August 22, episode of Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast. “Which I’m like, ‘The guy doesn’t even smoke. What is this vision coming from?’”
While McConaughey, 53, has portrayed the laid-back stoner bro archetype in a series of projects, Alves shared that’s not his true character at home. Instead, he takes after his mother, Mary Kathleen McCabe.
“He’s actually the opposite, and he’s like his mom,” Alves confessed. “She’s very organized, very minimalistic, very on time, very prepared, and he gets a lot of those traits from her.”
This isn’t the first time Alves has pointed out that McConaughey’s personality doesn’t match up with the characters he plays. In February 2014, Alves shared that her husband wasn’t as romantic compared to some of his iconic rom-com roles.
“It’s very funny because people see him onscreen or out there in public in a certain way, and they have this vision of him being this romantic and so passionate,” she said during Inside the Actors Studio at the time. “Just very romantic and grabs you and kisses you. And sometimes I’m like, ‘Who is this guy? Can you be a little bit of that?’”
McConaughey and Alves began dating in 2006 after meeting at a bar. While Alves rejected the Oscar winner at first, she eventually gave him a chance and let him take her out on a date. Two years later, the couple welcomed their first child son Levi. In 2010, they expanded their family with daughter Vida. It wasn’t until two years later that Alves and McConaughey tied the knot.
“I had to get to the point where I saw it as more than just the thing to do,” he told GQ about his hesitancy of marriage in October 2014. “I wanted to really want to. You know, I didn’t want it to be a destination; the fun is that we’re on the adventure together. And look, some of it had to do with her putting it on me. It took her going, ‘C’mon, Big Boy, Mr. Easygoing-We’ll-Get-to-It-When-We-Get-to-It. Either s–t or get off the pot.’”
Later in the episode, Alves admitted her mother-in-law, 91, put her through the wringer when she and McConaughey began their romance.
“She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? And she was really testing me. I mean, really testing me,” Alves said on Tuesday. “She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends’ names, she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting [me] down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff.”
Alves noted that she and McCabe developed a healthier relationship after a vacation to Istanbul. While the trip started off rocky, the duo came to an understanding of each other.
“All she wanted was for me to fight back,” Alves explained. “And then from that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship, and I have so much respect for her. She has so much respect for me. I mean, it can get tricky sometimes, you know? But we always end with a good laugh and a joke.”
