And how are your five fingers doing?

I’m happy to say I feel like I’m in the black. The one thing that’s gone into the debit is me being a good friend. Career, marriage, fatherhood—the others are doing good.

Probably your most famous friendship has been with Lance Armstrong. Do you maintain contact with him?

Yeah. Not as much. We e-mail here and there.

How is he doing?

He seems to be doing well. I don’t know anyone who can shake hands—meaning look at their situation realistically and deal with it—as quickly as him. He honestly has looked it in the eye and is on the road to recovery.

So many actors just hang out with other actors. What was your relationship with Lance based on?

I like people who are great at what they do. At that time, we were two single men who were doing good in their careers and came from different places. We would get together and have a steak dinner and philosophize—talk about life, talk about what it meant to be a man, what our responsibilities were, what it meant to be a father. You try to gain a little wisdom from each other. That’s mainly what I do with my male friends. We get together and talk about life.

Did you feel like you needed an apology from him for lying to you?

To put my own emotions in front of this and go "You didn’t tell me the truth" would be arrogant. And you know what? This is a friend. Who I know to be a good man. If there was an apology, it was said and I heard it.

Are you ever called Matt?

Never. Never, ever, ever. Some people do it online just to fuck with me. If anybody’s like, "Hey, Matt!" I don’t even turn around.

Is there some foundational experience that made you hate it?

Yeah, the foundational experience of being on the playground in kindergarten. My buddy John says, "Hey, Matt, you want to go play on the monkey bars?" I’m like, "Sure," and I’m going out there, and all of a sudden—wham—I’m on the ground. I look up and my mom says, "What’s your name?" "Matthew." "Don’t you ever answer to ’Matt’ again." From that day on, it’s always been, "Call me Matthew, please."

Whoa. I didn’t expect a full-on scene of violence. What was her problem?

She named me Matthew for a reason.

Last night at dinner, someone said, "Things have been going so well for McConaughey, it’s probably time for him to step in shit."

That’s funny.... "Step in shit." See, I love to see other people’s success. I never wait for anyone to step in shit.

But do you feel the pressure of increased expectations?

There hasn’t been any pressure. I know what hand I had in all this. It didn’t just fall off and happen. Did I have the whole hand? No. But I know what choices I made. And I sure didn’t make them for the guy who says, "It’s time for him to step in shit."

I’ll tell him.

Let him know: I step in shit all the time. It’s just that I don’t get that pissed off when I step in it. I just scrape off my boots. I’ve stepped in plenty of shit and will continue to. And by the way: Sometimes stepping in shit is good luck.

Brett Martin (@brettmartin) is a GQ correspondent.