Info
- Full Name: Matthew McConaughey
- Date of birth: November 4, 1969 (56 years old)
- Location: Uvalde, Texas
- Country: USA
Matthew McConaughey has been active for 32 years, participating in 41 movies that average a 6.3/10 score.
Biography
He was a film student in Austin when he fell into conversation with a casting director in a hotel bar. They drank late, and the man offered him three days' work. The film was 'Dazed and Confused' (1993), and in the first scene he ever shot Matthew McConaughey improvised three words, "alright, alright, alright", which have followed him around for thirty years.
Uvalde, Australia and the University of Texas
He was born on 4 November 1969 in Uvalde, a small town in south Texas. His father ran an oil pipe supply business and had played college football; his mother taught infants. They married each other three times and divorced twice.
At eighteen he spent a year in Australia on an exchange programme, then enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 1993 in radio, television and film. He still lives in the city.
Lawyers, submarines and romantic comedies
The film that made him a star was 'A Time to Kill' (1996), where at twenty-six he carried a John Grisham courtroom drama surrounded by much older actors. 'Contact' (1997), 'Amistad' (1997) and the submarine picture 'U-571' (2000) followed.
Then came a decade of very similar work. Hollywood worked out that he was excellent in romantic comedies and put him in 'The Wedding Planner' (2001) with Jennifer Lopez, 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' (2003) with Kate Hudson, 'Failure to Launch' (2006) and 'Fool's Gold' (2008).
The money was excellent, People named him Sexiest Man Alive in 2005, and the joke about him was always the same: the shirt would be off by the twenty-minute mark.
The McConaissance
So he did something almost nobody does. He stopped working, turning down scripts for close to two years and waiting for different offers, with no income coming in while he waited.
It worked. He came back in 2011 with 'The Lincoln Lawyer' and the psychopath of 'Killer Joe', for William Friedkin. In 2012 he played the strip club owner in 'Magic Mike' for Steven Soderbergh and the fugitive in 'Mud' for Jeff Nichols.
That run also produced his most imitated scene. He is on screen for a few minutes in 'The Wolf of Wall Street' (2013), thumping his chest and humming over lunch with Leonardo DiCaprio. It was his own warm-up exercise, and Martin Scorsese kept it in.
The peak was 'Dallas Buyers Club' (2013), for which he lost more than twenty kilos to play a Texan electrician with AIDS who sets up a network importing unapproved drugs. He won the Academy Award for best actor in March 2014, with Jared Leto taking the supporting prize for the same film.
The same year brought the two other things people remember from that stretch: detective Rust Cohle in the first season of 'True Detective', opposite Woody Harrelson, and the astronaut in Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar'. The press called the period the McConaissance and the name stuck.
Professor, author and nearly governor
What followed has been patchier on screen and more interesting off it. There were oddities like 'Gold' (2016), failures like 'The Dark Tower' (2017) and a commercial hit in Guy Ritchie's 'The Gentlemen' (2020). He also voiced the impresario koala in 'Sing' (2016) and its sequel.
In 2020 he published 'Greenlights', a memoir built from the diaries he has kept since he was fourteen. It sold in the millions and topped the American charts. A children's book followed, and then 'Poems & Prayers' in September 2025.
He teaches at the University of Texas, where he has been a professor of practice in the communication school since 2019, and he is a part-owner of Austin FC, the city's football club, under the self-invented title of "minister of culture".
In 2021 he spent months publicly weighing a run for governor of Texas. He never said which party he would stand for and pulled out just before the deadline. In June 2022, after the school shooting in Uvalde, the town he was born in, he stood up in the White House briefing room and argued for tighter gun controls.
Family, and what he's doing now
He has been married since 9 June 2012 to the Brazilian model and businesswoman Camila Alves, whom he met in 2006. They have three children and live in Austin.
In 2023 he told a family story that travelled around the world: his mother had revealed an affair with Woody Harrelson's father around the time he was conceived, meaning his 'True Detective' co-star could be his half-brother. Neither of them has taken a test.
After a long gap he is filming again. He voiced a cowboy Deadpool in 'Deadpool & Wolverine' (2024), starred in 'The Lost Bus' for Paul Greengrass, about the school bus driver who drove a group of children out of the Paradise wildfire, and headlined 'The Rivals of Amziah King', a small drama about an Oklahoma beekeeper that played SXSW and reached American cinemas in August 2026.
Family and relationships
- Parents: Kay McConaughey
- Children: Levi McConaughey
- Partners: Sandra Bullock (1996 - 2000)
awards
- Razzie Awards: 1 0
- Academy Awards (Oscars): 1 1
- Golden Globes: 1 1
Last appearances: movies and tv shows
- Highest-rated movie: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) 8.7
- Lowest-rated movie: Paparazzi (2004) 2.7
- Highest-rated tv show: True Detective (2014) 8.6
- Lowest-rated tv show: Sex and the City (1998) 7.4
Photos
Noticias
REBORN
Matthew McConaughey: The five roles that lead to the Oscar
We take a look at the latest and best roles played by an actor whose recently awarded Oscar for 'Dallas Buyers Club' comes after he managed to take his acting career in a surprising and pleasing new direction.
March 17 2014