The Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey and his mother, Mary, have just opened up about a “rough patch” that they suffered through a few years ago.

While appearing on “Red Table Talk,” McConaughey and his mother reflected on the ups and downs of their relationship as they spoke to Jada Pinkett Smith and her 20-year-old daughter, Willow, as well as the actress’ mom, Adrienne Banfield-Jones.

“You and I had a rough patch about eight years right after I got famous,” McConaughey said to his mother. “I was trying to find my own balance with fame and stuff, I would share stuff with her, and to whatever amount of innocence it was, we can now completely laugh at it.”

McConaughey went on to talk about how he felt about his mother speaking to the press about him.

“But some of those things I would share, might show up in the 6 o’clock news three days later,” he said. “For instance, coming home at my beach house, I got a buddy that calls me saying, ‘Are you watching this? Put on Channel 4,’ or whatever it was, it was Hard Copy or whatever, and here is a camera going through our bedroom. Mom is leading the camera saying, “And here’s the bedroom where I caught him with Michelle… ‘”

These days, McConaughey and Mary have gotten their relationship back on track, and they’re doing better than ever. McConaughey opened up more about their bond in his new memoir “Greenlights,” which he has said is not appropriate for his three young children to read at this time.

“This has some real life to it that they need to be older,” he explained, according to Entertainment Tonight. “Look, it’s like a lot of the films I’ve done or TV, they’re not ready to see Dallas Buyers Club, they’re not ready to see True Detective. You know, they’ve seen very few of my films. It would confuse them in ways they do not need to be confused because they’re not old enough to understand the context of that situation in life.”

“I think when it’s time for them to read it, I’m very excited about it, that they know me well enough and they’ll go, ‘wow,’ but not judge me any differently — just see me as more, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of things that Papa was doing before we were ever even in this world. There’s a lot Papa was doing when he went away to work each day, what a full-life Dad led,'” he added.

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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