SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Matthew McConaughey likes finding the rhythm in every role he takes, whether it's delivering a monologue in "Wolf Of Wall Street" or a tearful goodbye in "Interstellar." And now in his new book, "Poems & Prayers," he is finding the rhythm in his own life. And he is reflecting on what he finds sacred.
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MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I pray as a ritual. But I think when I'm most spiritually strong, all day feels like a prayer. I'm going through life and I'm seeing the beauty. I'm seeing truth. I'm looking at the ugly stuff, owning it, admitting it, not turning an eye from it.
DETROW: On Wild Card, Matthew McConaughey talked to host Rachel Martin.
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RACHEL MARTIN: Has ambition ever led you astray?
MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, hell yeah.
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MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, jeez. Yes. I love to accomplish. It gives me significance.
MARTIN: Makes you feel significant.
MCCONAUGHEY: Significant. And I need significance.
MARTIN: Ah.
MCCONAUGHEY: I need to feel it.
MARTIN: That's an interesting thing to know about yourself.
MCCONAUGHEY: Partially because I just do.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCCONAUGHEY: I can over-leverage myself with my ambition.
MARTIN: OK.
MCCONAUGHEY: I believe because I have proven to myself that I can take on more than I thought I could. But what can happen and where ambition has led me astray is you end up with a bunch of freaking campfires and no bonfires. Then all of a sudden, I'm looking at my desk going, jeez. Oh, man, I got to compartmentalize nine things today. And these are all new things, and they're all exciting on their own.
MARTIN: Sure.
MCCONAUGHEY: But there's only 24 hours in the day. So I don't have time to - I don't want to take for granted the bonfires that I have built.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCCONAUGHEY: 'Cause I got to keep putting wood on those.
MARTIN: Yeah. One of them is a family.
MCCONAUGHEY: Maybe we need to get rid of some of those campfires. But I would say that's where ambition has led me astray at times. It is also - I've done some things ambitiously - and I won't talk out of school with who it was - that I chased, I succeeded. I may not be sitting here right now if I wouldn't have chased those things, but I bruised some people along the way. And I look back, and I regret that.
You didn't say goodbye the right way, McConaughey. You felt like so much you had to have singular focus on this new ambition, which is a wonderful ambition, yes. But you didn't need to leave. You didn't need to burn that bridge. And then I go, well, I want to go back and repair that. Then all of a sudden more time goes by, and he goes, well, I can't repair it. And I just want to go, I'm sorry for it.
MARTIN: Did you?
MCCONAUGHEY: Some of them, yes. Some of them I have not. And a couple that I went back and said, I could've handled this exit better, this transition that we had. They had already forgiven me. They were like, don't, dude, no. So I was happy to feel that, oh, your threshold of sensitivity is higher than maybe even theirs was, and it was OK. But it still didn't mean that my feelings were invalid. And I've still got probably a couple out there which I could go back and go, hey, I just want to say, for what it's worth or not - and I don't want to come in here and be condescending. If you've already moved on, if you're like what the hell are you talking about, I just got to for me, if you give me a second.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCCONAUGHEY: Listen, I bogeyed back there. I could've handled that better. I could've still done what I did.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCCONAUGHEY: But I didn't have to turn a blind eye.
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DETROW: You can watch that full conversation with Matthew McConaughey by searching for Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube. Matthew McConaughey's "Poems & Prayers" is out now.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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