In 2018, Matthew McConaughey spent almost two months in a desert without a phone or electricity. He took a book of bad reviews instead

In 2018, Matthew McConaughey travelled to the West Texas desert near Marfa around 2018-19 to write his autobiography, Greenlights. He spent almost two months alone in the desert without a phone, internet, radio or electricity. Instead of staying connected to the outside world, the Oscar-winning actor used the time to reflect on his life and read reviews of his acting career, including criticism of his performances.

“I didn’t want to have these things to reach out and have a relationship with the rest of the world. I wanted to be stuck with me and who I’ve been in the last 36 years of my life. And I said look, if you get bored — you got only one person to hang out with — You,” he said during an interview with Indulge Express 2021.

Why Matthew McConaughey Took a Book of Bad Reviews to the Desert

In another interview with Build or Break, McConaughey revealed that he had collected reviews from critics covering roughly 20 years of his acting career. He took the collection with him to the desert and spent time reading the criticism.


“I took them on as a thick book… not all the positive, the negative ones—and I sat with them,” McConaughey said.

The exercise helped him distinguish between criticism rooted in personal dislike and feedback that could help him improve as an actor.

“Some of the reviews, what I learned is that, from the very first sentence, this person has it out for me. It didn’t matter if they saw the movie or not. They just don’t like me. They were going to write a negative review,” he added.

However, not every negative review was something he dismissed. McConaughey said some critics made valid points about his performances, even when they appreciated his work overall.

“I was like, ‘This person got a point.’ They’re actually a fan of mine, and they didn’t get from my performance what I was actually hoping they would’ve got. Where did I fail in achievement?” he said.

For McConaughey, that was an example of constructive criticism: feedback that examined the work and identified where he had fallen short.

“They were looking at the work and objectively criticizing it. Applauded some things, but also applauded some things that shined a light on where I came up short,” he said.

The actor also acknowledged that some people might criticise others regardless of their work or achievements.

“Some are going to write bad about you or wish you the worst no matter what, because they just don’t like you from afar, don’t like your success or what have you,” he said. “Some are really good critics or write constructively about what you did wrong—and you can learn from it.”

Matthew McConaughey's Career and Achievements

McConaughey has received several major awards during his acting career, including the Academy Award for Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club. He has also won a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

He said to have a net worth of about $200 million. Some of the notable movies of Matthew McConaughey includes Dazed and Confused (1993), The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), Mud (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), and Interstellar (2014).