Matthew McConaughey knew he was lucky when wife Camila Alves walked into his life at the perfect time.
The actor is featured on the cover of the latest Cigar Aficionado where he admits that he was starting to get worried about his love life before he met Alves, 36, in 2006. Then 37, the Oscar winner said he felt like his time was running out on getting to start a family.
“I mean, the clock was ticking—I was about to be 40 and my plan was to be married and have kids by that age,” he told the magazine. “But I didn’t want to play the game of starting to feel anxious because, with too much anxiety, you can’t find a mate. And then you make a hasty decision.
He continued, “I knew men who had made hasty decisions and women who had done the same thing. But at that point, I wasn’t hunting. And then this amazing woman walked across my field of vision and I thought, ‘Who is that?’ And it was Camila.”
McConaughey and Alves got married in 2012 in Austin, Texas and welcomed three kids since then — son Levi, 9, daughter Vida, 8, and son Livingston, 5.
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In the interview, the actor also weighed in on the career change that saw him go from romantic comedies to more serious roles.
“I just said, ‘F**k the bucks—I’m going for the experience’ in the things I was choosing,” he said. “I quit trying to project how something would be received and decided to just be an actor for hire again. So I shut down my production company and my music company and simplified the things on my proverbial desk. I love being an actor and going as deep as you can in a role, to really commit to the craft. I put my head down and went after roles that scared me.”
