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- Your parents had a complicated love story, divorced twice, married three times. What did you learn about love from your mom and dad and their love story? - That it's messy, that it takes work, that it's ugly, that no matter how a great of mess it is, don't go to bed until you've come back together to either embrace or admit that you truly love each other, even if you hadn't solved What the hell you were bitching about, that love will win in the end, literally, three to two with my mom and dad. Yeah, and that, even in the two divorces and in the two times where they couldn't live with each other, they still loved each other, just couldn't live with each other at that time for whatever reason. I don't know the details, but they needed their space, freedom, but they were never out of love with each other, and that as a parent, if you just… when we're not sure what to do, and people give you 1000 books and advice, that as a parent, if your kid knows you love them, you're good, that's the main thing.

What's the memory from childhood that helped set you on the trajectory of becoming the man you are today? Standing on the corner with Mr. Mayor, the principal of St Philip's school, I was in kindergarten, I looked up and there's a cloud in the sky, and I said, “Mr. Mayor, is that cloud as big as the world?” And he paused for a minute, and he goes, “Well, yes, it is Matthew.” Now, in my seven-year-old mind, I went, okay, I can see the outlines of it. And that must mean it is so far away. Because if that's as big as the world, I remember, it took 15 hours just drive from Longview to Florida last year, and I can't even see that far. So that cloud must be so far off that is not worth me even considering space, dreams, anything. I was like army. I'm looking down. I'm going to put my head to the ground, I look right in front of me and deal with what's in front of me, because dealing with dreams and what's out there, and not on this earth that gravity holds down is not worth considering, you’ll never make it. It's not even worth imagining. It's poof. It's fairy dust. So I think I got learned a lot of self-reliance from that. I think I got a work ethic from that. I think I got focus on what's right in front of you. Do the deed, take care of what's in front of you, one at a time, and slowly notch up your way.

I think we need to have a North Star, something to look forward to. But we all know that if we're staring at it, we're tripping on the way.

Even the people you love can sometimes suffocate the dream. Can make you believe that it's not possible. It feels like a lot of parents kind of want you to be safe, want you to be stable, want you to have a plan so that everything's gonna be okay, yeah, and the dream feels like a threat to that.

The idea of going to chase an acting career or something was what it was. It was that was a different vernacular. I was taught to work my way up a company ladder and nine to five job, but the day, I brought it up and said, I want to go to film school. And I thought my dad was going to go, “you want to do what?” He gave me some of the best advice ever, and told me not to half ass it. And said, go in between the lines. What he heard from me was that made him so happy. As a father, I believe it makes any parent happy is when our child doesn't ask us permission to go chase a dream. When they're going, “I'm bringing it up to you with full respect, yeah, but I'm doing this with or without you.” That's when a parent goes, “Oh, yes, I've done something right.”

We got to be more than just happy to be here. I'm big on gratitude, but we got to be more than just thankful to be here. Dream it, you can do it. It's got to be more than just dream

“Less impressed, more present” – I remember carved it in a tree. It took a couple hours. Still wonder. I still know where that tree is. Santa Monica, it was when my father had moved on. He'd left this life. All of a sudden it hit me, oh, I don't have the safety net. My dad was above law and above religion to me. He had me. If ever really was in the shit and I really needed him, I trusted that he had my back, above law, above anything. All of a sudden, he's gone. I'm going, okay, it hit me how much I've been pretending to be the young man, and not actually put my ass on the line and having enough courage to take risk and actually own up to the man that he was just trying to, he was teaching me to be.

Whereas my mom wants to be on the stage, my dad would have been on the front row. He's more fun to show stuff to.

I have to catch myself from trying to intellectualize my way into the reasoning and not skip over real feelings and discomfort. I mean, I did get that from my mom, and I have to watch it, that we’re so resilient that we just dust ourselves off and get up and go. You want to sit in the feeling. You want to feel it. You really deeply feel the pain. I want to deeply feel it. I want to look in the eye and deeply feel it, but I don't want to wallow in it. I was raised where you skip the deeply feel and let's go. And I've said it before, but that will lead to having turned into a person who is a repeat offender of the same crimes. Because you just get up and you don't have a winter in your life. You know what I mean? You don't have the introspective time. You don't look over your shoulder into the past, and so you just get up and you're like, “All right, I've stepped in the same pile of whatever 100 times, and I'm fine. I'll do it a 101^st, doesn't hurt.” Hell, it's good luck. Well, hang on a minute. Maybe we want to stop and go. “What can I learn from that?”

What value is there then to denial? Any? Oh, I think there's value to denial if you really commit to it. I get this from my mother, yeah, so it's a very pragmatic value to the denial, and my mom does it to an extent that I'm like, “Mom, do you have any consideration or context of situations?” And she does. She's not a shallow woman. But if something happens in her life, that is keeping her from going where she wants to go, or having a joy in her life, she'll straight ass deny it happened. Didn't happen.

I have a lot of friends, and I know a lot of people that earn weekly and daily therapy, and then I know there's a lot of people that are on prescriptions drugs, and while a therapy and the right prescription to the right person for the right diagnosis is necessary, I'm questioning, is There a value to going if you're not getting past this today, this week, this month, this year, often a decade goes when you're still hung up and you can't get rid of that thing, and your memory where, and you it's got you paralyzed, and you're, you're, you're a victim of it is there, and you're doing the therapy, and you're doing the work, and you're taking a prescription, if that's what you're taking, where does there is there value in going if it's holding you back from going where you want to go? Maybe you should just deny the fucking thing ever fucking happen? Kick it in the head. Kick it off the curb. I'm done with you. I'm sick of you. I'm tired of hanging out with you. I'm tired of that thing, whatever it is, hold me back from going where I want to go. If you can't keep looking, keep looking, you can't find the gift and the pain, just deny it ever happened.

I think the metaphor of red, yellow, green lights is just so simple and so powerful. You write about some green lights being engineered and some being mystical, which I love, the difference of that? What's the difference of the engineered green lights and the mystical? Such a cool word, mystical? Well, the engineered ones have reason and the mystical ones have rhyme. Yeah. You know, life's a mystery going forward, but it's a science. Looking back, I was prepared. I've had ideas, written headlines, and had goals, and athlete gets in shape for an event, and I get in shape for a role, I read, I study, I work, I prepare, and I go. I'm prepared, and I behave, and I do it, and I look at it and I go,” Yes, that's what I wanted to do.”  It's engineered green light. It's a conscious, delayed gratification. We can engineer those habits, work ethic, prep, expertise, education. And the mystical ones, though, don't make any sense. They're not supposed to make sense. They only make sense after when they happen, you backlog and you connect the dots with how you got there, that red light you ran into on the road that made you 30 seconds later to get to the restaurant and as you walked in, she walked out, and he went, “good morning,” and she went, “good morning.” And two months later, you're dating, two years later, you're married, a year after that you got a family, and now you're sitting here 40 years later, going, I love you. Look at what we've built. And you go back and go, what if I wouldn't hit that red light, those 30 seconds made all the difference.

Are you able to separate the man you are from the character you play? Am I able to separate? Yeah, I came home to my kids, and then they walk in the door and greet me and go, what'd you do today? And you got three kids under 10 years old. You don't tell them about the scene where you help someone commit suicide. So you turn it into a parable. And actually, I've always said this, having kids has made me a better actor, a better storyteller.

It was announced that you'll be starring in a Yellowstone spin off show. What do you think about the cowboy ethos that permeates Yellowstone and other shows created by Taylor Sheridan. You are a Texan. What do you think about that? Like philosophy and way of life? I admire the simplicity of it. I mean, one bit, one way you could explain Yellowstone and Costner's role is, what will man do to protect land and family in a world that's trying to encroach. I admire that simplicity of right and wrong and that the simplicity, that right and wrong doesn't always correlate with the law. No, it's above the law.

Cynicism is a horrible disease of getting older. I'm not going to do that. I’m fighting my cynicism off as much as I can.

Texas is liberal on your entrance. We have very little requirement on your entrance. Less regulation. “Hey, welcome.” High trust. “Sir, welcome to our state. Come on in.” But if you cheat and steal, yeah, we're conservative on our consequences.

Just keep living, man. I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we don't have any idea what to do? Make it matter. Even when it doesn't matter, that matters. For what? I don't know. For the fun of it, that matters. Our ability to create meaning and beauty in the mundane, in the absurd, it's kind of cool. And then we share it with each other. We get excited. And we create some pretty cool stuff along the way. It might be arrogant for me to say, but I do believe that we're here to each generation have a small ascension. Or else what's it for?

I think life's a verb. Live it as best we can. Hopefully. Sometimes I'm just, I don't have a grand plan. Man, I'm just trying to connect the damn dot. I'm confused, frustrated. I don't know what, I don't feel any gravity or building or lineage towards what I'm doing. And I just remember this line: “If you don't believe in heaven, do what you can to get as far away from hell as possible sometimes.”

"Don't walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it."

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