Matthew McConaughey pens 'playbook' on life lessons for Headline

Headline has scooped the first book by Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, billed as guide to success and satisfaction “through life’s lessons learned the hard way”.

Greenlights sees the star share anecdotes, poetry, lessons and yarns from his life, delivering a guide to achieve the state he calls “catching greenlights”.

Published on 20th October 2020, UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by publishing director Sarah Emsley from Matilda Forbes Watson at WME.

McConaughey, who announced the book on

yesterday (29th July), said: “This is not a traditional memoir, or an advice book, but rather a playbook based on adventures in my life. Adventures that have been significant, enlightening and funny, sometimes because they were meant to be but mostly because they didn’t try to be.”

The publisher explained: “McConaughey has kept a diary for 35 of his 50 years, and recently worked up the courage to take those writings into solitary confinement and read through them. He found not only stories, questions, truths and affirmations, but also a reliable theme. Greenlights is an album and a record of what he has seen and learned along the way—‘my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls'.”

McConaughey is a film star who won the Best Actor Oscar in 2013 for his role in "Dallas Buyers Club". He is co-founder of the just keep livin Foundation, which helps at-risk high school students make healthier mind, body and spirit choices. In 2019, he became a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Minister of Culture for the University of Texas and the City of Austin. He also “considers himself a storyteller by occupation, believes it’s OK to have a beer on the way to the temple, feels better with a day’s sweat on him, and is an aspiring orchestral conductor”.