Matthew McConaughey's secret exile into the wild: Here's why he did it

When Matthew McConaughey had a breakout success in his early career, he had no idea how to process it.

So, he fled into the wilds of Peru for over three weeks.

The academy-winning actress reveals he took a different name – Mateo – in those days and lived without electricity.

Appearing on the No Magic Pill podcast, McConaughey shares, “I needed to get my feet on the ground."

“So I click out. Boom. Go to Peru. I needed to find it, to check the validation', the actor continues.

"I knew I had it; I just had to go prove it again. But I did question, Now that I just got famous, I’ve got all this affiliation for this and that and the other."

"And I’m trying to decipher which part’s real, which part’s bull***.”

The first two weeks, McConaughey shares, were hard; recalling thoughts came to his mind to go back.

"As soon as you go and say, ‘I could do this,’ then you’re like, ‘Well, I can return home,'" he shares.

Yet things changed in his emotional journey with passing time.

“And at the end of 22 days, the tears in their eyes and the tears in my eyes and the hugs we had on the sadness and happiness of saying goodbye were all based off of the man they met named Mateo, who had nothing to do with the celebrity." 

"It reaffirmed my own identity that, ‘Oh, I still got it. This is based on me.’”

McConaughey in his early career scored a string of rom-com hits, making him a household name.