Matthew McConaughey used Oscar win to teach kids about hard work

Matthew McConaughey used his Oscar win to teach his kids a life lesson about hard work paying off.

The star picked up a Best Actor honour for his work in 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club and when he got home after the Academy Awards, his kids wanted to know all about their dad's new prize.

"I said, 'Do you remember a year and a half ago, when you said poppa looked like a giraffe..? Do you remember how you'd get up in the morning and he'd be gone, and I'd come home and I'd see you, we'd have dinner and I'd put you to bed?' And they said, 'Yeah'," Matthew said during an appearance on Good Morning America.

"I said, 'When poppa was leaving that day for 30 days, while working on that film, the work I was doing on those days, now a year and a half later, my peers came and gave me a trophy for it and deemed my work excellent. So you can do things today that will pay you back tomorrow'."

He also revealed his wife, Camila Alves, packed him off to the desert to turn 36 years of journals into his new book Greenlights.

Matthew admits he had planned to do something with his scribbles and musings for years, but it took "a kick in the backside" from Camila to get the job done.

"I wanted to get away with all 36 years of my journals and see what the heck I had and I had been threatening to go away with these journals for the last 15 years but never had the courage to do it, and finally I got a little bit of time on my hands and a kick in the backside by my wife... and she said, 'Get out of here and don't come back home until you've got something'," he laughed.

"There were some very cold nights. It was a total 52 days. The first 12 were without electricity. After that there was a generator in hand at times."