THE McCONAISSANCE

‘I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.’

Matthew McConaughey, Elle, 2013

‘My life outside my career is extremely enriching,’ McConaughey enthused to People magazine. ‘So I am letting that feed my work, and letting my work feed my life.’

Matthew McConaughey was now the comeback kid. His career was on a high and he loved every minute of it. In some respects it was similar to the path of actor Mickey Rourke, whose career had gone off the rails in the late 1990s. Rourke began to take smaller roles in the 2000s and then he got a starring role in the critically acclaimed film The Wrestler, directed by the much-respected Darren Aronofsky and released in 2008. Since the release of that film, Rourke has been cast in such major productions as Iron Man 2 and The Expendables. Similarly, Julia Roberts kick-started her career, which had been stuck in stale rom-coms and modest dramas, with 2000’s critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning Erin Brockovich, directed by Steven Soderbergh. All of a sudden, Julia Roberts was on fire and one of the most successful and high-earning actors in Hollywood.

‘His backstory is a lot like Sandra Bullock,’ said Tom O’Neil, founder of awards tracking site GoldDerby.com, to USA Today on McConaughey’s recent success. ‘Somebody who was known for making cheesy commercial movies of dubious quality, who hung in there year after year and maintained a career until suddenly they got the good movie roles and critics’ attention. Hollywood likes that. They like the survivor. And they like the happy ending.’

Acting in Hollywood has a very short shelf life. Ryan Reynolds faced a challenge after the action movie flop of R.I.P.D., so he signed up for some independent films, just as Taylor Kitsch faced challenges after the failures of both Battleship and John Carter, so he signed up for Lone Survivor and HBO’s adaptation of The Normal Heart. In a similar fashion to Matthew McConaughey, these actors knew that they needed to rebrand themselves in order to stay in the limelight and thus keep working. On the other hand Ben Affleck turned to directing after the failures of Gigi and Daredevil and came up trumps with Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo.

Talking about the change in his professional and personal life throughout the 2010s McConaughey explained to the Independent’s Lesley O’Toole: ‘Part of it is just growing up and part of it is I’m very turned on and excited about all kind of things. Probably more things now than I used to be. I work hard to maintain the good things in my life that I’ve built – friendships, work, family, my own time. Sometimes you’ve got to go, “Ah man, I haven’t seen my brother in three months.” But it feels really great when you can think: “Boy, all my relationships are good, people that I love are good, and my relationship with them is good. My career, I’m dialled, it feels good. Health is good.” But to maintain that, when things change, you’ve got to be nimble at times.’

‘It was a lot of romantic comedies and action films,’ McConaughey elaborated to Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Labrecque. ‘I just said I feel like I’ve done a version of that before. Or I feel like I can do that tomorrow morning. And I think I’ve done enough of that for now, and I want something that I don’t think I can do tomorrow morning. I want something that scares me.’

*****

McConaughey was cast as Detective Rustin ‘Rust’ Cohle in the acclaimed HBO series True Detective. McConaughey had never played such an honest and bold character on screen as Cohle. His co-star Woody Harrelson was cast as his partner Detective Martin ‘Marty’ Hart. The rest of the main cast features Michelle Monaghan as Maggie Hart, Michael Potts as Detective Maynard Gilbough and Tory Kittles as Detective Thomas Papania.

True Detective was created by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Its central premise concerns two vastly different Louisiana State Police homicide detectives who hunt a serial killer in Louisiana across seventeen years; the series uses multiple timelines across eight episodes.

The series premiered in the US on 12 January 2014 and on 22 February in the UK. He was back on the map. True Detective woke up the world and made people aware of McConaughey’s talents as a character actor. McConaughey did not watch the advance tapes but like the rest of the US he watched it on Sundays, week by week, as the story unfolded with nail-biting tension.

‘Matthew is a divisive figure in Hollywood,’ Harrelson said to GQ’s Jessica Pressler. ‘I have found myself defending him to people who don’t really know him, who for some reason feel very antagonistically toward him. He’s a good guy, he’s great-looking, has a perfect body, his career’s through the roof.

‘People resented that, and the way they justified it is, “He has never done a movie of substance,”’ he continued. ‘They can’t say that anymore.’

Pizzolatto is the natural heir to NYPD Blue and Deadwood creator David Milch. Author of the excellent novel Gavelston and a former assistant professor of literature at DePauw University in Indiana, Pizzolatto has become one of the most respected writers in TV. Before True Detective his only produced scripts were a pair for the US remake of the hit Danish series The Killing. ‘I wanted to look at the relationship between these men and how it changed,’ declared Pizzolatto to The Guardian’s Sarah Hughes. ‘I wasn’t interested in doing what everyone else was doing. The point wasn’t to write another serial-killer show.’

There are a lot of non-verbal scenes in the film, which says as much about the relationship between the two detectives as the dialogue. Theirs is a tough relationship as Hart tries to understand Cohle. They are on very different planes of thought. Cohle’s reactions are often monk-like with little or no expression just dialogue, while Hart is easier to read but is still a troubled soul who betrays his wife with his extra-marital affairs and has anger management issues.

Both onscreen and off, the two lead stars clicked. They’d first met back on the set of EDtv in 1999 and subsequently hooked up on the long-forgotten movie Surfer, Dude. They try to meet as often as they can on a social level so it was great to collaborate again in front of the camera. There’s a lot of brotherly love between them, as well as mutual respect and admiration for each other’s talents.

‘Part of why Woody and I are friends,’ McConaughey reflected to Collider’s Christina Radish in 2014, ‘is that we get on each other’s frequency, and we affirm each other and one-up each other. It can turn into an improvisation, but it can go into the ether, and then some. I have a really big mag full of films [sic], but this is the first time we worked together where there’s real opposition. This was not about us coming together. Early on, I remember that we said, “Boy, we gotta put some kind of fun in this. This thing can be a lead weight.” We found a new sort of comedy, but it was not the comedy of the two-hander, where I pass it to him, and he passes it back. We were not playing catch, back and forth.’

‘I love Matthew McConaughey, he’s like a brother to me,’ Harrelson enthused to the Metro. ‘I honestly wouldn’t have done it, except that Matthew was doing it. He jumped into it and said “yes” before any other actors were involved. He related to the writing and knew how good it was from just the two episodes he’d read.’

Woody Harrelson had already worked with HBO on Game Change and was impressed by how the network works.

‘I can’t imagine anyone playing that part better,’ said Harrelson of McConaughey at the HBO panel of a Television Critics Association event in early 2014. ‘It was different than any other part I’ve seen him play before, and he knocked it out of the park.’

TV has changed. Some of the finest writing is not in film but on the box, with shows such as The Wire, House of Cards, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. It used to be the case that once-popular film actors would only end up on TV if their careers had washed up, but nowadays actors of the calibre of McConaughey, Glenn Close and Kevin Spacey have turned their attention to TV because there are fewer restraints when it comes to the writing. Producer Richard Brown explained his view to The Guardian’s Edward Helmore: ‘TV is made fast, but often lacks the tools of cinema. With True Detective we wanted to bring more cinema into TV – to find the sweet spot between film and TV.’

McConaughey read only the first two episodes of the series and he was committed. True Detective is planned as an anthology series with each series offering new storylines and characters. McConaughey signed a contract for the full eight episodes of the first series. Had it been a film it would have been a 450-page script.

‘That was another way I got lucky,’ said Pizzolatto to Sarah Hughes of The Guardian. ‘When Matthew expressed an interest, it was right before his renaissance. I’d seen Killer Joe and knew he was one of the few actors who could say Rust’s dialogue and make you believe it. With a lesser actor, the part would have had to be drastically rewritten.’

However, Pizzolatto also told Alan Sepinwall of HitFix: ‘I was really excited about Matthew playing Cohle, but the truth is, Woody was already on a very short list of men we wanted to approach. He had just come off of Rampart and Game Change, which are two incredible performances and incredibly different performances. So we always had Woody in mind as someone to approach. And when Matthew asked if we considered him, we were like, “Yeah, of course, and maybe you could help with that, since you guys are friends.”’

‘The first conversation I had with Matthew on the phone,’ director Fukunaga told The Guardian’s Paul MacInnes, ‘I could tell he was a smart guy. The first time we met he brought some music that he thought would work for the show. Initially we had differences in how we envisioned Cohle, but in terms of where he came from, we 100 per cent agreed on that. It was up to Matthew to put the flesh on that, be it in his voice or the way he moves. I wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do but I was very pleased with the results.’

Committed to just one season meant McConaughey didn’t have to renew his contract after a year and go back. It worked well for him considering how his film career had been revitalised. Each day they filmed thirty-nine pages of script – which is a lot of work, involving hours of filming and long days. However, some fans feel cheated with anthology series because they get so close to the characters that by the end of the season they’re left wanting more. Will viewers return for a second season? Will the scripts and actors be as good as season one? Vintage anthology series’ such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone have had a massive impact on science-fiction and fantasy, and American Horror Story is a successful modern anthology series that has run for four seasons with the possibility of a fifth, but in the main, anthology series don’t have much of an impact – especially in an age of multiple channels, the internet, downloading and streaming.

‘No more Rust Cohle, no more Marty Hart after eight episodes,’ McConaughey said to late night US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. ‘They’ll have another murder mystery to solve, but it will be all new detectives. Two of ’em, three of ’em, somewhere else.’

Pizzolatto expressed his thoughts on another season with McConaughey and Harrelson to Alan Sepinwall of HitFix: ‘I love working with those guys, and we loved working together, and we’re looking for things to do together in the future. I think for cinema actors, it’s a very gruelling thing. It takes up half their year at least, when they might usually be able to make two movies, or make one movie and enjoy downtime with their family. I would be completely open to anything those guys would want to do. People have asked about them coming back and I just have to say I think that would completely depend upon our actors, and if they wanted to I would of course jump on board. I feel like watching them, it made me say, “Why hasn’t anyone put these guys together before in a serious film?” They just play so well off each other. The highest compliment I can give their performances is I think it’s impossible to imagine two other guys in these roles after you see them.’

McConaughey prefers to work with directors who understand him and his personal take on the character. Cary Joji Fukunaga knew what McConaughey was doing with his character, Cohle. McConaughey likes a nudge here and there, and a director with objectivity. The pair worked well together on set.

Pizzolatto wrote clear identities to the characters and tone of the series. McConaughey and Harrelson basically went off the source material as it was complex enough. McConaughey went inside his character’s head to understand where he was coming from – why he is so obsessive, troubled and alone. Cohle is a realist living in a world that is not black and white. ‘There’s an ambiguity that is very existential in the guy,’ McConaughey said to John Lopez of Grantland. ‘He’s very specific but you’re like, “How many more things can you be like this about?” Which leads to what we were talking about earlier, the comedy comes from the exasperation of “Dude, shut up.” “Well, you asked – you wanted to talk.” But no one’s selling.’

It’s both interesting and challenging for McConaughey to get inside Cohle’s head – to see what his character was like in 1995, a man who is going back on a homicide case, who is barely keeping everything together. And then go back to the character seventeen years later in 2012 when he’s off the case and fallen off the rails. What happened in between? The storyline throughout the eight episodes fills in the gaps. The viewer slowly finds out what happened. It is an extraordinarily well written series; deep and immersive as it sucks the viewer into a complex web of plotlines. Cohle is certainly not a white knight. He’s a deeply intense and complex man tormented by his own past.

‘We usually have a shorthand in the way we work together but on this project a lot of what would be our shorthand didn’t apply,’ Harrelson told Metro about working with McConaughey on the set of True Detective. ‘Usually, we finish each other’s sentences but with this, Matthew was an island. He is one of the most gregarious guys I know but he is a little more method than me, and with this, he was fully in character and stayed in it.’

The 2014 HBO series True Detective won McConaughey rave reviews. Critics were stunned that the actor who’d been relatively lame in The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, Fool’s Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past could give such an alluring and grippingly dark performance. It was almost miraculous, really. Between 2001 and 2009 he’d hardly given any memorable film performances, but from 2010 onwards every performance he’s given on screen is simply marvellous. McConaughey has since become one of the most watchable actors alive. A decade earlier, most critics couldn’t stomach him.

David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: ‘The dialogue is rich, colourful and provocative, adding to the gothic sensibilities of the series. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga makes great use of the Louisiana location, giving it as much importance to the story as the characters of Cohle and Hart. All the performances are superb, but those of McConaughey and Harrelson are in a class by themselves.’

Benjain Secher of The Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘In the rich, dense, intense True Detective, HBO has created as irresistible a way of killing time as you’ll find on the small screen this year.’

The season finale, however, drew some negative complaints, but on the whole True Detective was hugely well received and will possibly go down as one of the truly great TV shows of the decade. ‘Thought the series was great,’ Alan Yuhas expressed in The Guardian, ‘the finale was more than a little lacking. It’s probably worth rewatching, though there were likely a few too many threads to tie up in eight episodes… In the end, True Detective finally flipped, and Marty and Rust discovered the good life again. They became the awkward buddy comedy we’d always wanted. I just wish the evidence were a little more convincing.’

McConaughey explained his fondness for his recent stream of outlaws, antiheroes and outcasts to Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Labrecque: ‘They’re all characters who weren’t placating to civilization or society, so I liked them. They’ve all been sort of fringe-y characters that I was able to define certain obsessions that they had. And as an actor, if I can grab a hold of an obsession or two, that’s what I wanted to get drunk on.’

In June 2014, McConaughey was honoured with the Best Actor award at the fourth annual Television Critics’ Awards for his role in True Detective. Breaking Bad picked up Best Drama. McConaughey praised television for ‘raising the bar for character-driven drama.’

True Detective had begun the year in fine style and January also delivered a whole shelf of awards and accolades for McConaughey. It was awards season and McConaughey had both The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club to his name, as well as True Detective, which is surely set for some recognition during the 2015 awards season. This period also gave McConaughey further chance to talk about Dallas Buyers Club, which he relished. He was presented with the ‘Independent Spirit Award’ at the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival on 4 January. Past actor recipients of the ‘Independent Spirit Award’ include Jeff Bridges, Bradley Cooper, Daniel Day-Lewis, Colin Firth, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt.

‘Matthew McConaughey is the rare actor who effortlessly moves between cinematic genres. From drama to thrillers to romantic comedies, he captivates audiences with the depth and range of his performances,’ said Harold Matzner, Chairman of the Palm Springs International Film Festival. ‘In the acclaimed new movie Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey plays real-life cowboy Ron Woodroof, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and given a month to live – but fought for dignity, acceptance, and living life to the fullest. We are privileged to present Matthew McConaughey with an award that honours his extraordinary and versatile talent, the 2014 Desert Palm Achievement Award for acting.’

McConaughey was in fine company as the awards ceremony also presented honours to Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, director Steve McQueen, Bruce Dern, Lupita Nyong’o, Thomas Newman and the cast of American Hustle. McConaughey was presented with the award by the revered British actor Gary Oldman, who said McConaughey’s performance in Dallas Buyers Club was fearless, sincere, honest and free. In his acceptance speech, McConaughey said: ‘Dallas Buyers Club was not an easy story to find. They don’t come across our desk that often. It’s been the best film in my career, that is for sure!’

McConaughey won a Golden Globe on 12 January. ‘This film…Ron Woodruff’s story was an underdog. For twenty years it was an underdog, turned down eighty-six times. Nobody wanted to put up money for it. We got the right people together five years ago, put some skin in the game, and here it is,’ said McConaughey when he accepted the award at the star studded ceremony.

He added: ‘Time like this makes me want to say thank you to my mother for a real reason. We were growing up, we weren’t movie kids, we weren’t TV kids, we weren’t media kids… if it was daylight, you had to be outside playing. We’d go, “Why mom? Why can’t I just watch 30 minutes of TV?” She goes, “Don’t watch somebody on TV do it for you, get out there and do it for yourself.” Now this many years later I’m like, “That’s a pretty good recipe for an actor.” Go be the subject of whatever you’re doing.’

‘How are you going to top that speech you made at the Golden Globes? It’s untoppable,’ Jimmy Kimmel said during an interview with McConaughey on his popular late night talk show on ABC. ‘I feel like you wasted your A material on the Golden Globes, and now you have a lot to live up to. Do you have anything in mind?’

McConaughey also won ‘Best Actor’ at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on 18 January where he gave a rather unusual speech, which involved Neptune and baffled everyone. He also bagged an Oscar for ‘Best Actor’ on 2 March 2014 (no Screen Actors Guild Award winner has failed to pick up an Oscar since 2003) for his role as Ron Woodroof.

He told the press (Gossip Center) that he sat down and spoke with his kids before the lavish Oscars ceremony: ‘“We’re going out tonight because there’s an award show. Remember when we were back in New Orleans and lived in that house? The work that dad did then, the work we all did, people are shining a light on it today, so if you do your best right now, it can have reciprocity later and come back and pay residuals.” That’s the lesson we’re trying to get to them.’

The world’s media watched the celebrities walk the red carpet in expensive tailor-made suits and dresses by some of the top names in fashion. McConaughey looked dapper in a handsome black and white tuxedo. Camila worked with Charlene Roxborough, hairstylist, Jasmin Robles and makeup artist Patrick DeFontbrune to create her dream Oscars look. Alves and Roxborough worked with designer Gabriela Cadena for her dress. ‘I’m dressing for him [Matthew] and he does give input,’ she said to ABC News. ‘He likes to see me, not the dress taking over.’

With Kim Novak, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, at his side McConaughey also delivered a trophy to Frozen for ‘Best Animated Feature’.

McConaughey gave a detailed albeit rather baffling and pretentious thank-you speech, which included the following: ‘There’s a few things, about three things to my account that I need each day. One of them is something to look up to, another is something to look forward to, and another is someone to chase. Now, first off, I want to thank God. ’Cause that’s who I look up to. He has graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late Charlie Laughton, who said, “When you’ve got God, you got a friend. And that friend is you.”’

The forty-four-year-old also thanked his family, friends and colleagues for the Oscar. There’s no doubt that he was thrilled to finally get the coveted award. It’s something that he’d always wanted to get his hands on. His co-star Jared Leto was also a winner, picking up ‘Best Supporting Actor’ – that meant that for the first time since 2003’s Mystic River a single film had claimed both acting awards at the Oscars. McConaughey has also either won or been nominated for many film festival awards and regional film awards in North American and Europe.

‘I just find that the more I wake up and find things to be appreciative about, they do reciprocate somehow,’ McConaughey told Josh Elliott of ABC News backstage at the Oscars. ‘Gratitude is a scientific fact. It fills me up to be thankful for things and I have a lot to be thankful for, always starting with just the fact that you get another day. We take that for granted.’

The Sun reported that McConaughey was eager to get home after winning the Oscar so he could celebrate with his wife. As reported in The Sun, he was allegedly overheard by one source saying: ‘We won’t stay at the after party long – I want to go home and make another baby!’

A source also said: ‘Matthew wasn’t worried about getting drunk, he was more keen to get home with his beautiful wife, which he made quite clear in her ear… It was so lovely to see, though. It’s clear how in love they are. They kissed and kissed and kissed.’

Winning an Oscar or an Emmy was not something that he was aiming for but he was extremely proud and happy to win them. ‘I think that it’s absolutely fair to judge art,’ he told RogerEbert.com’s Susan Wloszczyna. ‘I have opinions about things that are better than other things. If there was no gauge, you would say Shakespeare is the same thing as any junior-high girl’s diary. I’m not really thinking about the result of it. But people are saying it to me. I don’t know, we’ll see. I like the film. I like the experience. I can talk about it for hours. And, if it translates in that way, great.’

Friends, family and fellow actors came out in support of McConaughey and spoke about how pleased they were for his success. His former onscreen lover Jennifer Lopez told Para Todos magazine: ‘It was great working with Matthew. So proud of what he’s accomplished over the last few years and I have fond memories of him on set.’

It’s interesting to look at his spate of films post The Lincoln Lawyer: the characters are all defined by the predicaments that they find themselves in. Not every future venture will be an indie film but there does seem to be a link with auteur directors. These films have given him a newfound freedom as an actor. He doesn’t feel tied down by genre or stereotype; he is free of all shackles. He’s no longer interested in ‘Saturday characters’ as he refers to them. Once upon a time he’d been attracted to the lightness of the romantic-comedy, the fairy tale-like charm of them, but those roles were long over as more realistic characters came calling.

The first half of 2014 began extremely well for McConaughey and the second half of the year was no different, as it saw the release of the eagerly awaited science-fiction film Interstellar. The film, directed by Batman Begins and Inception director Christopher Nolan, tells the story of a group of space travellers who travel through a wormhole. The script by Jonathan Nolan, which had originally been set up for Steven Spielberg, had been undeveloped for years until his brother Christopher combined it with a separate idea of his own. In March 2013 Christopher had confirmed he was to direct the film, his first after he closed his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises. Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway had been cast in April 2013.

‘Matthew works from the inside out,’ Nolan told Variety’s Jenelle Riley. ‘He approaches a character from a deep human understanding, refusing to take shortcuts to an emotional connection with the audience – all while never losing sight of the demands of the overall narrative.’

Interstellar sees McConaughey tackle the role of an engineer and pilot named Cooper who travels through time and space to find a new planet that is suitable for human inhabitation. Humanity’s fate rests on Cooper’s shoulders as Earth faces a crippling food shortage.

Nolan had seen Mud and was pleasantly surprised by McConaughey’s performance. ‘I admired him as a movie star and I knew he was a good actor, but I didn’t know how much potential he had until I saw that early cut. It was a transformative performance,’ Nolan said to Tom McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter.

It was at an event when Nolan saw McConaughey and approached him to tell him how impressed he was by the film. McConaughey was then asked to fly out to LA to meet Nolan. They had a two-hour chat at Nolan’s house and not a word was uttered about Interstellar. McConaughey walked out unsure of what to think. McConaughey then received a call and was offered the role.

McConaughey likes the way Nolan works – straight to the point, on time and under schedule and with an indie sensibility. Nolan, after all, began his career making independent films such as Following and Memento.

The actor took his Airstream, one of three he now owns, to the set where he based himself during filming. On the door there is the now iconic aphorism: ‘Just keep livin”.

‘I’m a personal believer in faith and science,’ McConaughey said to Vulture’s Jennifer Vineyard on the subject of faith versus science or science versus faith, as illustrated in Contact and Interstellar. ‘I think the two can definitely co-exist. I’m always trying to make faith a science! But part of all of this is working with directors who have a really particular point of view. These independents that I’m getting acclaim for, let’s remember – I could have given the same performance in crappy movies!’

The film features an ensemble cast of co-stars including Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, Mackenzie Foy, David Oyelowo, Elyes Gabel, Leah Cairns and William Devane. The cast were sworn to secrecy.

The Bourne Identity and Good Will Hunting actor Matt Damon spoke to MTV News about working on the film with McConaughey and director Chris Nolan: ‘All I can say is I don’t have a big part. I was just thrilled to work with Christopher Nolan and I had a blast working with him… I really had so much fun. Matthew, he’s the lead in the movie… talk about being in the zone, he’s really just crushing everything right now and I think it’s just going to be great.’

Interstellar was released in US and UK cinemas in November 2014.

*****

Who knows what projects McConaughey will choose after Interstellar. One idea that has yet to be green lit, but which McConaughey has spoken about for several years, is The Grackle. He plays a barroom fighter in New Orleans who hires himself out for $250 to settle arguments between folks who don’t have to cash to pay for a lawyer. He planned to be generous with the casting as he told Tom Chiarella of Esquire back in 2011: ‘Well, my company is developing it. So I’m figuring everyone who ever did me a favour, got me a ticket or a backstage pass, they’re gonna be calling and asking to be extras. That’s a lot of souls. Every bar in that movie is gonna be full of people I know.’

According to the industry website The Wrap, McConaughey had signed up for a role opposite Ken Watanabe in Gus Van Sant’s drama Sea of Trees, though the actor had not announced it publicly at the time of writing. The script, which made the 2013 Black List (best unproduced scripts), was written by Chris Sparling (Buried). Gil Netter (Life of Pi) is set to produce, and it was to be Van Sant’s first film since the Matt Damon, John Krasinski drama Promised Land. The film is about an American man who takes a venture into the Suicide Forest at the foothills of Mount Fuji with the aim of taking his life. However, a Japanese man intervenes and he has second thoughts about killing himself. He tries to find his way out of the forest, and both men begin a journey of reflection and survival. It is an existentialist story about faith in humanity.

When it looked as though McConaughey was destined to appear in romantic comedies and little-talked about dramas in the 1990s, he took a gamble and totally reinvented himself – so much so that by 2014 he was an Oscar-winning actor and back in the A-list elite of Hollywood stars. And in Bernie, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, Mud and Dallas Buyers Club he had a decent catalogue of recent critically acclaimed films under his belt. His performances were widely praised and rightly so; he is an incredibly talented and understated actor. Just when you think he has become a parody of himself he turns his career around and surprises audiences with stunning performances such as in the five films mentioned above. Here is an actor who had starred in reasonably acclaimed films as Amistad and Contact, but then sunk so low as to be cast in a series of forgettable romantic comedies such as Fool’s Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Critics and film buffs had written him off but he turned his career around and was cast in a number of highly praised films, as well as and one of the most talked about TV shows of the 2010s, which has been compared to HBO’s critically acclaimed crime series, The Wire.

‘Matthew is a bit of a vagabond,’ said director Richard Linklater to Vogue’s John Powers ‘He could live in a trailer and be just as happy. If he didn’t have a family, he might not even have a house.’

Did anyone expect 2014 to be Matthew McConaughey’s year? It’s highly doubtful. McConaughey is in a good place in 2014, both professionally and personally. He is a successful and revered actor, and an entrepreneur with a charity, clothes line and indie record label. He is happily married with three children (eldest son Levi Alves McConaughey, daughter Vida Alves McConaughey and youngest child Livingston Alves McConaughey), a beautiful home in West Texas – a 1,600-acre working ranch – and his career is going extraordinarily well. Family is very important to him.

‘They eat, they crap, they sleep and if they’re crying they need to do one of the three and they’re having trouble doing it. Real simple,’ he once admitted to late night talk show host Jay Leno.

In 2014 they planned an eleven-day trip to Brazil to see Camila’s family and they made a rule: they’d each carry a backpack and stay holed up in one room together. It goes back to his family tradition in Texas growing up: there are always stories to tell and adventures to take. He keeps a diary; one for each film and one for each time he travels. Being married to a busy working actor can be tough but they are a team.

‘The best education I’ve had in my life is to travel,’ McConaughey told IndieLondon in 2008, ‘and that’s what we get to do in this job. My kid’s going to travel, and I’ve got a goal to fill that passport pretty early in his or her life. That’ll be its own challenge, but that’s going to be fun. I want to bring my kid to the set, to the locations that I go to. Some of the greatest people that I’ve met in my life, the most creative people I’ve met, are in this circus, this carnival of people who get together and go and make a movie.’

Having children changed everything for him. He knew he wanted to be a father even before he chose what career he wanted to pursue. For McConaughey, being a father reminds him of the great things in life. It helps him approach things with more significance and has changed acting for him. You pass down your knowledge and experience to your children. He doesn’t want to rush his children; he allows them to grow up on their own time and enjoy childhood.

‘Being a father is the one thing I always knew I wanted to be,’ McConaughey confessed to The Daily Telegraph’s Tom Shone. ‘Looking around at my own life, I said to myself, “Man, what I’m doing in my own life is more interesting than my work.” I was like, “That’s OK. Better be that way than the other way around. At least you’re getting something out of life. You’re going to work and you’re enjoying it. You’re finding ways to get challenged, McConaughey.” You do the work, it pays the bills, but boy my life was vital. The way I’m loving, the way I’m expressing my anger, either I’m mad as hell or I’m laughing harder at that joke than anyone else does.’

McConaughey is a loyal man; he stays loyal to his family and friends. In fact, he’s had the same friends for a long time. His loyalty is a trait he wants to pass on to his children. ‘I guess the other things are how much do you decipher between what’s just DNA and what’s the culture and environment they’re going to be raised in,’ he explained to IndieLondon. ‘The way I was raised, the one thing we knew no matter what was that Mom and Dad loved us. That made it easy for us to adapt even when you’re getting your butt whupped or you’re getting in trouble. It was the old: “I love you but I don’t like you right now,” so you always knew you had that.’

His mother Kay, who had self-published a book called I Amaze Myself in 2008 and is an active member of The Children’s Advocacy Centre and Family Outreach, was asked by Donna White of Austin Daze if she was a traditional all-American milk and cookies sort of grandma to which she replied: ‘NO! Not at all! But, I mean, they don’t try me. They’re very respectful to me and I can’t imagine them talking back to me. But they’re always happy to see me because I do the fun stuff. Levi (Matthew’s son) loves to role-play and he’s only three. I say, come on let’s go, and he says, “Is the big black car gonna pick us up?”’

As with Kay’s own children, her three boys, she loves to tell stories to her grandkids. Her book was all the stories she used to tell and how she wanted them to be passed down through the generations. She’s happy to be herself and enjoys life to the max and is both a good mother and grandmother. She’s had a fun life; she’s made mistakes but learned along the way. She’s treated well by her youngest son who allows her to travel with him sometimes to far away and exotic places such as Italy and Africa. She does, however, get frustrated when the family is disturbed by journalists or members of the public who ask for autographs or photographs because of his celebrity status. Details of some of his personal habits became popularised: he uses Kiehl’s face lotion every day; when he dresses up in a suit he uses Clarisonic and puts on his signature scent, ‘The One’; and his everyday scent is fresh-cut St. Augustine grass which is grown in his home state of Texas.

Winning an Oscar and riding on the back of a handful of revered films, McConaughey has become a target for the paparazzi and entrainment gossip journalists. He had also become a darling of the critics. On 20 February, he appeared on Inside The Actor’s Studio with presenter James Lipton. McConaughey was snapped at LA airport on 25 March with his mother having arrived from a flight from Rome, Italy.

Gossip Center reported: ‘An Italian eyewitness told press that McConaughey treated his mom to only the best cuisine while overseas, including dinner at Antica Pesa. [The witness said:] “They looked adorable. His love for his mom was evident, and he treated her like a queen. You can tell he is such a southern gentleman, and they looked happy to be spending time together.”’

McConaughey was in Italy for work while Kay was travelling around Europe, but they still found time for each other over dinner. They enjoyed a variety of appetisers including crudo e bufala, tuna carpaccio and some vegetables. For the main course, they tried cacio e pepe and amatriciana pastas, followed by beef cheek braised with Sangiovese wine reduction, orange foam and seared radicchio.

Only days earlier – on the Saturday – he was snapped at LAX catching a flight. McConaughey is now a fully-fledged celebrity – not that he had never been one before but his status had faded somewhat – although he is not getting the sort of attention that was given to him on the back of A Time to Kill in the mid-1990s.

Other celebrity news surrounding McConaughey’s recent burst of popularity circulated around the world as the hat, which he had worn in Dallas Buyers Club, sold at auction for a staggering $12,956. The starting price was $3,000 and three bids were made. The LA based auctioneer Nate D. Sanders had originally bought the hat for $1,291 at the SAFG auctions, but he felt it had the ‘potential for much more’ and indeed it did.

One Upper East Side coffee shop (DTUT) played an April’s fool’s joke when they offered customers a chance to ‘Meet Matthew McConaughey’ only to discover it’s the name of the shop’s goldfish. Needless to say some people who turned up did not find the joke funny at all.

McConaughey was also given the opportunity to induct Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame on 26 April. Director Richard Linklater also wrote a piece on him for Time magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ special, which included McConaughey.

There are three distinct phases to his career just like there are so many stories of his seemingly oddball lifestyle. When he started out he was touted as the next Paul Newman. That phase lasted a few films and then he became the actor Hollywood went to for romantic comedies. Finally phase three came about as he relaunched his career so very successfully in 2010 and 2011.

‘I didn’t actually go out and grab all those things – some of them came to me – but I did put the brakes on some other things I was doing for about a year and a half and decided I was going to wait,’ explained McConaughey about his career facelift to the Yorkshire Post in 2013. ‘I said to myself, “I don’t know exactly what it is I want to do but I want to wait until something comes in that really intrigues me.”’

Then there are stories of Airstream trailers, playing golf barefooted, push-ups on the beach, lost flip-flops, shirtless afternoons, playing the bongos naked, brushing his teeth while driving and random trips to far off places, and naming his dog Miss Hud (named after the Paul Newman film, Hud, one of McConaughey’s favourite movies since his teenage years). There’s certainly something unconventional about him. He’s just a humble kid from Texas who did his parents proud.

‘I do have less time for friends now,’ he admitted to Details’ Adam Sachs. ‘My close friends have had to come to understand that I can’t just throw on a backpack and say, “We’ll be back in four days.”’

Life is an adventure and McConaughey has always wanted to live every day as though it is his last. He has played real-life heroes, but who are his influences and inspirations? ‘In the eighties, Steve Biko’s story, in apartheid South Africa,’ he admitted to Stylist’s Susan Riley. ‘Thomas Merton, a Benedictine monk who was a real rebel and then died from an electric shock in a monastery. [Stunt rider] Evel Knievel – talk about a will to live. Those are a few people who’ve been an inspiration.’

His company Just Keep Livin has grown from strength to strength over the years. Originally there was just McConaughey and his childhood buddy and business partner Gus Gustawes, before they employed more staff. A website – MatthewMcConaughey.com – was set up which the actor was really proud of. They then spent time funding and making their first finished production Surfer, Dude, before expanding the company into music, clothing and charity.

The days when he appears with his shirt off on the cover of People magazine are seemingly long gone, and leading roles in fluffy romantic comedies are equally a thing of the past. He’s a different actor now because he is a different man. He has evolved. He is a thinker, a dreamer; a deep man often waxing philosophical ideas. Sure, there is more than a hint of pretentiousness to him but he is nevertheless an interesting individual, far more interesting than some have been led to believe. McConaughey is a calm individual. He usually finds his Zen through diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. His family is massively supportive and they help, too, especially during busy periods of his life. Coming from a Methodist background, he is also religious and takes a minute or two timeout to thank God. Religion and family give him perspective and reassurance. Religion also connects him to his past and gives him an understanding of where his future lays.

‘…responsibility is when you create your own weather,’ he once said, as quoted on Cinema.com. ‘Whether it’s the people you hang out with, the places you choose to go, the things you choose to do, you have to be responsible to it, and the more responsible you are, the more Lady Luck shines on you. It’s circular. It keeps coming back, and regurgitates.’

McConaughey spoke to John Lopez of Grantland about religion and its place in his life: ‘I do believe in God, but I think it’s very healthy for a believer to spend time in the pragmatism of agnosticism, and I think God appreciates agnostics trying to make a science of it and going, “I will not believe any further than that.” I enjoy that kind of engineering mind. In no way did it ever feel blasphemous to me as a man of faith. And what was I like at home? I was a pretty good explainer to the kids about things. I got pretty good at breaking down – if/then, this/that.’

McConaughey has learned that you may not get everything in life but that you can get everything you need and be appreciative of what you have. He’ll wake up in the morning and find things to be grateful for and learn that they do, somehow, reciprocate. He knows to be thankful for what he has and to enjoy life. Like a travelling circus, the McConaughey’s split their time between homes in Malibu and Austin. ‘I have a very healthy relationship with time,’ he said to Dennis Lim of The New York Times in 2012. ‘It’s a very unimpressed town because it has an identity.’

McConaughey is enjoying acting and wants to be an actor for hire. Finally, he is getting noticed. He wants roles that are going to scare him a little, that take him out of his comfort zone. He’s also looking to gain more experiences as more scripts come his way.

There’s no question that McConaughey will from now on be careful about which projects he chooses. As with the resurrection of the once flagging career of Robert Downey Jr’s post-Iron Man, McConaughey can now command millions of dollars per film and star in some of the most talked about and popular Hollywood films. Careers constantly rise and fall in Hollywood. Nicolas Cage, a once popular and respected actor who often starred in unconventional, on the edge roles, has seen his career flagging in recent years due to poor decision-making. Lindsey Lohan wasn’t helped by a seemingly bad attitude and an overindulgent personal life; films like Herbie: Fully Loaded didn’t help her either. McConaughey can now be spoken in the same breath as Leonardo DiCaprio, Denzel Washington and Sean Penn, with a string of great performances and fantastic films to his name. It will perhaps be the critics who will continue to be surprised by McConaughey more than anyone else. They’d once written him off but are now praising him to high heaven. Such is the fickle nature of the industry.

He’s a character actor as well as a movie star nowadays, but it took twenty years for people to find how just how talented an actor he is. The wave of movies – Killer Joe, Magic Mike, The Paperboy, Mud and Dallas Buyers Club – were all part of an idea that McConaughey had about getting some first-time experiences. He wanted to be excited. He wanted to be scared. He was having much better results than with any of period of his career. His career had been turned around by those bold choices.

Since his turn of fortunes, McConaughey has begun to impress fellow thespians. ‘When he started making choices that were less based on his looks and had artistic integrity, a lot of young actors became very impressed,’ Laura Gardner, an actress and instructor at the Howard Fine Acting Studio in NYC, said to The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes. ‘McConaughey has demonstrated a commitment to his art, to finding that truth in his characters.’

In terms of professional pursuits, McConaughey isn’t interested in anything but acting at the moment. He doesn’t want to produce or direct, even though he has expressed a keen interest in doing so in the past. He wants to choose the right role, make the film and then a year or so later go out there and talk about it, sell it and promote it. That’s his main concentration now. He’s learned how to survive in Hollywood. A cesspool of failed dreams, tragedy and lost hope, and yet also a land of glamour, fantasy and incredible wealth. He knows how to navigate his way around the industry and govern his career by his own set of rules and standards. He doesn’t allow Hollywood to direct him. It’s the other way around.

‘I’m getting much more of an array of stuff,’ McConaughey admitted to Deadline’s Christy Grosz. ‘It’s not of one specific genre. That’s what’s really fun now. I’m getting to choose. People are going, “OK, so you want to do dramas?” Yeah, I’m enjoying the dramas, but keep that comedy coming! That stuff’s fun, man!’

Matthew McConaughey has the option to do whatever he pleases and whatever he does he will no doubt surprise himself and his fans. McConaughey has learned to say yes to roles because he feels lucky. He is thankful but he is now being more selfish. There is room for evolution because every aspect of his life is in the ascendant.

He just keeps livin’.