Matthew McConaughey Details Dropping 4,000 Feet During Plane Turbulence: 'I'm In Shock'

During an appearance on SiriusXM's "Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa" podcast, the 53-year-old actor opened up about a Lufthansa flight he took with his wife Camila Alves that suddenly dropped 4,000 feet.

"It's suspended disbelief. I mean, it's zero gravity," he explained. "Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn't that long -- one, two, three, four [seconds] -- and then everything just comes crashing down."

Noting the experience as "a hell of a scare," McConaughey recalled feeling, "A complete loss of control, a 100% feeling of, 'I am not in control.' I have no way to get control of this situation at the moment."

The "Interstellar" star revealed he wasn't wearing a seatbelt at the time and claimed there was no warning light letting passengers know to buckle up for incoming turbulence.

"My tray table is what held me down. I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened," he continued. After the incident, McConaughey said he "immediately reached over, made sure Camila had her seatbelt on."

"[We] held hands just saying, 'OK, is that it? Is there another one coming?' Another one did come. It was odd. You hear people's reactions. Some people were ghost silent. Some people had big bursts of laughter. And it was not like, 'Oh, this is fun.' It was like, 'I'm in shock,'" the "Dallas Buyers Club" star recalled.

Luckily, the couple was traveling with a friend who happened to be a pilot. After his friend assured them they had nothing to be worried about with the bouts of rough turbulence, McConaughey felt relieved.

"As a person who's not a pilot, my mind goes to the actual engineering of the plane. The steel, it buckled. And you go, 'How can something withstand that?'" he remembered thinking. "I happened to have a friend of mine sitting next to me who was a pilot. And he was calm as could be. I was like, 'Can the plane hold that?' And he was like, 'These things are so tested, that yes, don't worry, the plane structurally can hold that.' That was a big relief."

The actor quipped to his friend, "I was like, 'If something's wrong, can you fly this thing?' And he was like, 'No problem.' And I was like, 'Great, love to hear that.'"

"It was the hairiest flight I've ever had by far," McConaughey admitted.