Matthew McConaughey recruits Idris Elba for virtual book tour

Matthew McConaughey is taking his virtual book tour overseas by recruiting Idris Elba to interview him for events targeted for the U.K. and Australia.

The Oscar winner has turned his journal entries and musings into a new book, titled Greenlights, and to mark its release on 20 October, McConaughey has asked a group of famous friends, including Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, and Dwayne Johnson, to chat with him at a series of promotional online book stops.

The actor's Dazed & Confused director Richard Linklater will kick off the virtual events at the BookPeople store in Austin, Texas on 19 October, and Ethan Hawke will wrap up the seven-date U.S. book tour by sitting down with Matthew at the Texas Book Festival on 7 November.

During his trip to book stores across America, McConaughey has lined up three virtual get-togethers with Elba, which will air at times to accommodate fans in the U.K. and Australia, on 20, 21, and 24 October.

Speaking about his new book, which he calls "a love letter to life", the Dallas Buyers Club star said: "I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five."

McConaughey promised the book included passages on: "How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me."

Sitting down and re-reading the diaries was a special experience, he reflected: "Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers."