Family man. Matthew McConaughey wants a big brood, but his family of five is all set.
“I’d like to have eight more kids, but my wife, [Camila Alves, is] not on the same page,” the actor, 50, said at HISTORYTalks, Leadership & Legacy in New York City on Saturday, February 29. “I understand that. It’s a lot easier for us [men].”
The Oscar winner, who shares son Levi, 11, daughter Vida, 10, and son Livingston, 7, with the model, 38, added that “the only thing [he] ever knew [he wanted] since he was 8 years old was to “be a dad.”
Since welcoming his and Alves’ kids, the Texas native has played “a large hand in shepherding” the little ones. “That’s the thing I think I do most honorably is having three autonomous, conscientious, confident children,” he gushed.
The Interstellar star loves bringing his children to set, but revealed that he “puts them to work” every time they come out. “We give them a little cash for catering,” McConaughey said on Saturday. “My daughter’s gone in to work with seamstresses and the costume departments.”
That isn’t the only way that his acting experience has shifted since becoming a father. “The character I am in my life, the man I am in my life, the story I’m living is more violent than the characters in the stories that I feel like I’m playing in some of these romantic comedies,” the True Detective alum reflected. “So, I took off in kind of an un-branding phase. Not a rebranding phase, an un-branding phase. By being away, by un-branding, then all of a sudden, things came to me that I was wanting to do. Dramatic roles that I’d been pursuing that weren’t coming my way.”
The producer added, “Then I went on a run with Killer Joe, Mud, Magic Mike. I got ahold of Dallas Buyers Club, but no one wanted to make it with me. Then we made that. For about 11 years I’ve been on a run that I’ve been enjoying.”
McConaughey and Alves wed in June 2012 at their home in Austin, Texas.
