Matthew McConaughey was not wearing a seat belt and was 'held down by his tray table' while onboard a Lufthansa flight which dropped 4,000 feet amid severe turbulence on March 1.

The Oscar-winning actor, 53, whose wife Camila Alves, 41, recounted their terrifying ordeal aboard the flight from Austin, Texas to Frankfurt, Germany last month - said he experienced a 'hell of a scare' in the incident which injured seven people.

Lufthansa Flight 469 was flying 37,000 feet over Tennessee when the crew reported severe turbulence.

Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast per Entertainment Tonight:, the True Detective star said: '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 added he 'immediately reached over' to Camila to make sure she had her seatbelt on, saying: '[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."