By Elizabeth Branca
Longview High School’s “Most Handsome” senior of 1988 is probably not the first accolade that comes to Matthew McConaughey’s mind when he reflects on his accomplishments over the past 25 years or so — a list that includes a long line of hit movies and acting awards, and yes, even the world recognized his good looks as People Magazine named him “Most Sexiest Man Alive” in 2005 — but he doesn’t forget where he came from.
“I haven’t checked in with my people back in East Texas in a while,” McConaughey said,” but who I am today has a lot to do with who I was and growing up there.”
Never a yen for silver-screen stardom or the dubious crown of sex symbol, McConaughey’s boyhood fantasies sprung from a love of football and fast food.
“East Texas will love this,” he said, with his longhorn-sized lilt kicking into overdrive. “I thought I’d be a Washington Redskins running back. At four years old my favorite food was hamburgers and the Redskins had a linebacker, named Chris Hanburger. That made me fall in love with the team.”
He also fondly recalled sneaking out of church to listen to National Football League announcer Pat Sommerall excitedly report game plays and that his parents would only allow him to stay up past his bedtime for the Redskins versus Cowboys rivalry on Monday Night Football.
Although McConaughey remains a big football fan, his chosen career path — after originally studying law — switched gears to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas in Austin in 1993. He began acting while there and hasn’t looked back.
Two decades after his big-screen debut in the coming-of-age cult classic “Dazed and Confused,” McConaughey is now getting serious attention from critics for his recent performances, and none more than the Dallas Buyers Club for which he has already won Best Actor awards from the Gotham Independent Film Awards, Rome Film Festival, Hollywood Film Awards, and is being honored at the 25th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival January 4. He’s also nominated for Best Male Lead for the Independent Spirit Awards. He is nominated for Best Actor, Drama, for a Golden Globe, with awards announced January 12, and is an odds-on favorite for an Oscar nomination. The 86th Annual Academy Awards show is March 2.
Win or lose at these award ceremonies, his portrayal of hard-living cowboy Ron Woodroof — whose HIV diagnosis and subsequent struggles are depicted in the film — has garnered strong critical praise as the best performance of his career to date.
Shedding 47 pounds for his lead role in Dallas Buyers Club, he morphed his optimally sinewy physique into a flesh-taught carcass. The actor’s jarring physical transformation packs a powerful visceral punch and brings home the true frailty of Woodroof’s health. However, its the fierceness of Woodroof’s mental acuity and tenacious will that provides the most compelling contrast against his failing form.
“I’m a pretty athletic guy and I lost a lot of that,” McConaughey said about his dramatic weight loss, “but when I lost the power from the neck-down, it transferred to the neck-up. My mind was so acute and sharp. It was a really wonderful realization.”
The film picks up Woodroof’s story in 1985 when the electrician and part-time rodeo rider is initially diagnosed with AIDS and subsequently given a 30-day death notice. For the womanizing, bed-hopping homophobe, an AIDS diagnosis seemed unimaginable, as the disease was thought to be exclusive to homosexuals, which was the common misconception of the time. Sadly for Woodroof, a past drunken dalliance proved deadly in the early age of the 1980s AIDS health crisis.
Anything but submissive, Woodroof rails against his diagnosis and instead of quiet acceptance his mind and spirit are infused with the bravado of a street brawler, not willing to submit to the disease. The transference of power between the physical and the cerebral is powerfully illustrated as the HIV virus ravages Woodroof’s body, his will to live is galvanized. Working tirelessly to learn more about the disease and the availability of medicines to enable him to live longer, Woodroof begins his quest, becoming an unlikely AIDS advocate, prolonging his life for another seven years and the lives of others.
“In a way what was sad, true and beautiful, is that he really found purpose, a direction in his life, after contracting HIV. He found something to fight for,” McConaughey noted. “He had a lot of opposition. The disease tried to take his life, the FDA shut him down, and he had to peddle these drugs.”
Beyond its condemnation of pharmaceutical-company greed and FDA buffoonery, Dallas Buyers Club is a story of redemption, made even more profound by the transformation of its booze-fueled anti hero.
McConaughey revealed that he hadn’t heard of Ron Woodroof or the buyers’ clubs, but knew it was an extraordinary story upon reading the script. In preparation for the role’s intensive 30-day shoot, the actor reached out to fellow-Texans, Woodroof’s family, who graciously opened their home to the actor, sharing hours of recorded interviews, scrapbooks and even his diary.
“This guy never quit or let go,” McConaughey said. “His sense of movement and adaptability lent itself to the idea of never giving up. There’s that Texas side that says ‘I’m not listening to anyone’ and if you want something done well, then you gotta do it yourself — which is what Ron did.”
McConaughey said he did more research into Woodroof’s character than he’d ever done before, but that’s because there was more available. Texas is movement, he surmised to director Jean-Marc Vallee, and attributed Woodroof’s joie de vive to geography.
“Texans understand movement on a very literal sense because of the weather,” he said, “It changes from sunny and warm to cold quickly and they know how to adapt. I’m a lot about movement — even when I’m sitting still.”
His philosophy on vital motion stretches back to his youthful days in the East Texas countryside. If the sun’s out, you gotta be outside, he said, and if the TV was on, Mom came in and turned it off. He remembers her advice, “Don’t watch somebody do it — do it yourself,” and admits that her “can do” spirit helps him with his job as an actor.
A world traveler since a study abroad stint after high school, he feels comfortable in the big city, but explained it’s his childhood memories of playing outdoors that motivated him to move his family from Malibu back to Texas.
“I’m very comfortable, perhaps the most comfortable in nature and being outdoors in the elements and a lot of that comes from how I grew up,” said the married father of three children. He married Brazilian model Camila Alves, the mother of his children, in 2012. “I wanted them to have some of those Texas values and the common sense that is more inherent in rural areas. That common sense comes from how we deal with nature.”
After his initial success as a leading man in A Time to Kill, many of McConaughey’s films have broken the $100 million box-office mark, however since making his way into the indie film rabbit hole in the last three-years, McConaughey’s parted ways with blockbusters. With performances in Bernie, Killer Joe and Mud he’s earned heaps of critical kudos, but the films have not translated into box-office revenue. His current trend in film choices reflects a fertile new era creatively, and perhaps, an ever deeper reverence for his craft. Not unlike most Texans, it’s about good work, not big bank.
“The anti-hero or the bad-guy is so much fun to play because they make their own rules,” the actor commented on his recent penchant for grittier, sometimes grotesque characters. “I don’t always personally agree with the politics of the characters I play, but I don’t have to. I have my own morality and it’s not up to me to moralize my characters, so if I can play a part when it interests me — if it turns me on, if I can bring humanity to that character and therefore serve the story — then that’s what I’m going for.”
He views acting akin to storytelling and weaving a good tale is an innate gift for Texans. He noted that when the shooting finished for Dallas Buyers Club he felt a bit lost after being in character for a month. McConaughey recalled a sense of seeing Woodroof from the inside out and feeling as if he had a clear ownership of his portrayal.
“I was pretty secure that I was hittin’ it on the screws, to use baseball or golf terms,” he said. “Sometimes with parts, you think, ‘I hope they didn’t catch me acting.’ With this film, after I watched the first scene, all I saw was Ron Woodroof and that felt really good.”
Never one to forgo his roots, whether hometown or cinematic, McConaughey is quick to share his affection for his Dazed and Confused character David Wooderson, and fans who still remember his famous lines.
“My favorite fans and the funniest also, are the Dazed and Confused fans,” he said, “They don’t want an autograph or to get on the phone and call their cousin. What they’ll do is when I’m walking down the street somewhere they’ll approach and say ‘that’s what I love about those high school girls’ and keep walking. “To which, I follow up with ‘I get older, but they stay the same.’ I look back over my shoulder and they look over theirs and give me a wink or a wave.”
