Matthew McConaughey

by Neil Daniels

  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.’

  Similarly to his character Mud, McConaughey knows how to survive; he’s become wiser as he’s gotten older. When he’s been hurt he’s learned not to get hurt again and he’s experienced heartbreak, which he doesn’t want to repeat. He believes in innocence, in the dream. ‘Well, I have still inside of me a lot of innocence,’ he admitted to Total Film. ‘I’m not nearly as naïve as I used to be, thankfully, but you know they say as you grow older you grow wiser, you should know better, and you know well there’s some things that you know worse. There’s some things that you don’t want to [know], life teaches you some lessons that can kind of creep in and break that dream a little bit. Pragmatism does that. And all of a sudden, the avenue between here and here becomes using a o
ne-way street from the head down.’

  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.’