Before he was a superstar, the Oscar winner used a trick to teach people how to pronounce his last name.

Before Matthew McConaughey was cemented as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, his last name didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. In fact, in August 1996, when PEOPLE touted the young actor as a newly minted “hot celebrity,” the magazine included a reader tutorial on how to pronounce “Ma-CON-a-hay.”

“I said, ‘Man, I’m going to hear ‘McGonaghey’ and ‘McGonaghay,’ ” the actor recalls telling his voice coach Tim Monich at the time.

“And Tim goes, ‘Real easy. This is what you tell someone who mispronounces your name: It’s McConaughey, rhymes with ‘What would Madonna say?’ ” the Oscar winner tells PEOPLE in an interview for the magazine’s 50th anniversary special issue.

The tip worked. “One hundred percent, when I’ve said that, people always said ‘McConaughey’ after that,” he says.

Of course, after more than three decades of fame and far-reaching impact as an actor, humanitarian and bestselling author, the star’s polysyllabic name is no longer a challenge. Just don’t call him “Matt.”

“I still hear ‘Matt’ from time to time, and I always know they’re not a good friend,” he says. “People ask, ‘What do I call you?’ [and it’s] anything but Matt, basically. Matthew McConaughey. Crap-head. Whatever you want to. … But not Matt.”

The line in the sand came early on from the actor’s mom, Kay McConaughey, and he learned the hard way.

“I got my first whooping for answering to Matt from my mother, who was a kindergarten teacher at the time,” says McConaughey, now 54. “My buddy John goes, ‘Hey, Matt, you want to play on the monkey bars?’ I said sure, and I go running to the playground… I feel this hand on my shoulder, bam! Get slammed to the ground.”

It was Kay, who was not having her son’s shortened nickname. “She goes, ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Matthew.’ And she goes, ‘That’s right. I named you that after Matthew, gift of God from the Bible. You’ve never answered to Matt. That’s something you step on going in the door. You ever answer to Matt again, you’re in trouble,’ ” he recalls.

Needless to say, McConaughey didn’t make the same mistake again. “That was my kindergarten lesson,” he says, amused by the memory in retrospect.

“So if something calls me Matt now, I know you don’t know me that well.”