Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey | |
|---|---|
| File:Matmypic.jpg | |
| Born | Matthew David McConaughey |
| Height | 6' (1.83 m) |
Matthew David McConaughey (born November 4, 1969) is an American actor. After a series of minor roles in the early 1990s (including his breakout role in Dazed and Confused, director Richard Linklater's second feature film), he came to fame after starring in several successful films, including A Time to Kill and U-571. He is known for having played the leading man in several hit romantic comedies, including The Wedding Planner (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) and Failure to Launch (2006).
Biography
Early life
McConaughey (pronounced "ma-KON-a-hay"), the youngest of three boys, was born in Uvalde, Texas, son of a gas station owner who ran an oil pipe supply business and a mother who was a substitute school teacher; he has Irish ancestry.[1] McConaughey had what he describes as a conservative Christian upbringing.[2] McConaughey's late father, James Donald McConaughey, and his mother, Mary Kathlene "Kay" McCabe, divorced and re-married each other several times, in what McConaughey describes as a "loving, but unstable relationship".[3]
McConaughey moved to Longview, Texas in 1980 and graduated from Longview High School in 1988, where he was voted the "Most Handsome".[4] Matthew lived for a year in Warnervale, NSW, Australia as a Rotary exchange student.[5] He had relative academic success in high school, and went on to college. He studied film direction at the University of Texas at Austin and was a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity, graduating in 1993.
Career
McConaughey began his acting career in 1991, appearing in student films and television commercials in Texas before being cast in Richard Linklater's film Dazed and Confused (1993), after meeting casting director Don Phillips at a bar near the University of Texas at Austin. After appearing in some additional small parts in Angels in the Outfield, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, Boys on the Side, and the television series Unsolved Mysteries, McConaughey's big break came as the lawyer "Jake Brigance" in the 1996 film A Time to Kill, based on the John Grisham novel of the same name. In 1997, McConaughey won an MTV Movie Award for best breakthrough performance for the role. He has also twice been nominated for a Blockbuster Entertainment Award.
McConaughey gained renown and was cast in leading roles in many more movies: Contact, Amistad, The Newton Boys, Edtv, and U-571. By the early 2000s, he was frequently cast in romantic comedies, including The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, both of which were successful at the box office. During this period, he appeared as a firefighter in the low-budget film Tiptoes, opposite Kate Beckinsale, in Two For The Money as a protege to Al Pacino's gambling mogul, and in Frailty, cast against type as a serial killer, opposite Bill Paxton.
McConaughey starred in the feature film Sahara (budgeted at $130 million), along with Steve Zahn and Penélope Cruz. Prior to the release of the movie, he promoted it by repeating some trips he took in the late 1990s, including sailing down the Amazon River and trekking to Mali. In 2005, People magazine named him their "Sexiest Man Alive". In 2006, he co-starred with Sarah Jessica Parker in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch, which was reasonably successful at the box office.
McConaughey also provided voice work for an ad campaign of the Peace Corps in late 2006. Matthew's production company, j.k. livin, is currently in development on projects with Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount and Imagine Entertainment and can most recently be seen in the football drama We Are Marshall. He is supposedly in line to star as Thomas Magnum in the 2008 movie Magnum, P.I.[6]
Personal life
On October 25, 1999, McConaughey was arrested at his home in Austin, Texas; the charges included possession of marijuana and resisting arrest. The police were responding at 2:37 a.m. to a disturbance call after a next-door neighbor complained of noise. They arrived to "easily hear very loud music," bongo drum playing and clapping from McConaughey's residence. According to police reports, McConaughey was dancing around naked and playing bongo drums with a friend, actor Cole Hauser, a co-actor in Dazed and Confused (1993).[7] The drug charges were dropped, but McConaughey pled guilty for violating the city's noise ordinance and paid a USD $50 fine.
In 2006 in Sherman Oaks, California, he reportedly snatched a cat away from two youths who had doused the animal in hairspray and were attempting to light it on fire.[8] Earlier, in 2005, the actor is said to have frightened away a coyote that was threatening a mother and child in a Los Angeles park.[9] An Oprah Winfrey episode from that same year also showed McConaughey participating in a rescue of various pets, including cats, dogs and hamsters, that were stranded after the flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.[10]
As admitted on "Monday Night Football," he is a die-hard Washington Redskins fan. He is also a fan of University of Texas at Austin football and is often seen at Longhorn games. In addition to his home in Austin, he owns a 1,600-acre ranch in Texas. He has dated actresses Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, and more recently Penelope Cruz. The two had been together since 2004, following Cruz's break-up with Tom Cruise. Having split with Cruz in April 2006, McConaughey has been seen with a number of different women at clubs around the United States, but most notably Kaufman nurse, Denise Black. The very fit McConaughey spent much of the summer of 2006 enjoying hobbies such as running, surfing, swimming, and biking, as documented by the paparazzi.
McConaughey's personal life is the subject of media attention. In July 2006, some of his real-life foibles were documented via "McConaughey's Lost Weekend",[11] a blog with photographs of a "three-day bender in Costa Rica." In the November 2006 issue of Details magazine, McConaughey flippantly responded to growing rumors that he and cyclist Lance Armstrong were involved in a gay relationship with the comment, "We tried it. Wasn't for us."[12] McConaughey has been hailed as one of the industry's hottest young leading men, inspiring comparisons to actor Paul Newman and he was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" for 2005. "Extra, NBC" reported in 2006 that McConaughey admits to wearing no underwear and says he doesn't use cologne or deodorant, because he doesn't want to smell like someone else. He reportedly said, "People say I ought to start wearing it."[13]
On December 19, 2006, eBay's homepage featured Matthew's picture and named an auction of autographed items he donated to raise money for charity as the "It" of the day. In a 1998 interview, McConaughey claimed to be a diehard fan of WWE Monday Night RAW, and even claims to have never missed an episode.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | My Boyfriend's Back | Teenage Moviegoer | |
| 1993 | Dazed and Confused | David Wooderson | |
| 1994 | Angels in the Outfield | Ben Williams | |
| 1995 | Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation | Vilmer | limited release |
| Boys on the Side | Officer Abe Lincoln | ||
| 1996 | A Time to Kill | Jake Tyler Brigance | |
| Lone Star | Buddy Deeds | ||
| Glory Daze | Rental Truck Guy | ||
| Scorpion Spring | El Rojo | ||
| 1997 | Amistad | Baldwin | |
| Contact | Palmer Joss | ||
| 1998 | The Newton Boys | Willis Newton | |
| 1999 | Edtv | Ed 'Eddie' Pekurny | |
| 2000 | U-571 | Lt. Andrew Tyler, Executive Officer | |
| 2001 | The Wedding Planner | Steve "Eddie" Edison | |
| 2002 | Reign of Fire | Denton Van Zan | |
| Thirteen Conversations About One Thing | Troy | ||
| Frailty | Adam Meiks | ||
| 2003 | How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days | Benjamin 'Ben' Barry | |
| 2005 | Two for the Money | Brandon Lang | |
| Sahara | Dirk Pitt | ||
| 2006 | We Are Marshall | Coach Jack Lengyel | |
| Failure to Launch | Tripp | ||
| 2007 | The Widow Claire | TBA | |
| Ghosts of Girlfriends Past | TBA | Just Announced | |
| Hammer Down | TBA | Just Announced | |
| Dear Deliah | TBA | Just Announced | |
| 2008 | Fool's Gold | Filming |
References
- ^ "Metro.co.uk". 60 Second interview: Matthew McConaughey. Retrieved 2006-05-07.
- ^ "FindArticles". Matthew's interview - Matthew McConaughey - Interview. Retrieved 2006-04-15.
- ^ "ABC7news.com". Barbara Walters' Oscar Special. Retrieved 2006-04-15.
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000190/bio
- ^ "ONEnews". McConaughey credits Australian town. Retrieved 2006-12-22.
- ^ BitsofNews.com: "McConaughey is Magnum P.I." Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ The Smoking Gun: "McConaughey1." Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle: "McConaughey in Cat Rescue." Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ Star Pulse blog: "Matthew McConaughey Scares Coyote." Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ Toronto Fashion Monitor: "Matthew McConaughey Saves the Pets." Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/07/mcconaugheys-lost-weekend/
- ^ HollywoodScoop.com: "Quote of the Day." Retrieved April 20, 2007.
- ^ ContactMusic.com: "McConaughey: I Like my Odor." Retrieved March 25, 2007.