Entertainment
The 5 Steps in the Evolution of Matthew McConaughey From 'Failure to Launch' to 'Dallas Buyers Club'
It's hard to fathom now, but as recently as 2009, if you had told someone that Matthew McConaughey was a likely Oscar contender, they would've laughed you out of the room. For the majority of his career, the actor was better known for crappy rom-coms and showing off his abs than well, actually acting. Now, though, thanks to a string of acclaimed, type-defying performances, including one in this year's Dallas Buyers Club , McConaughey has emerged as a seriously talented star. How did he do it? Let's take a look.
How Matt Became a Serious Actor
It's hard to fathom now, but as recently as 2009, if you had told someone that Matthew McConaughey was a likely Oscar contender, they would've laughed you out of the room. For the majority of his career, the actor was better known for crappy rom-coms and showing off his abs than well, actually acting. Now, though, thanks to a string of acclaimed, type-defying performances, including one in this year's Dallas Buyers Club , McConaughey has emerged as a seriously talented star. How did he do it? Let's take a look.
1. He Stopped Doing Romantic Comedies
After years of starring in critically panned rom-coms like Failure to Launch and Fool's Gold, McConaughey finally put an end to the nonsense. In 2009, he co-starred with Jennifer Garner in the dumb, cliched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and then ... he stopped. Fans of shirtless McConaughey might've been disappointed, but the end of the actor's rom-com era was really just the beginning of his career. Image: New Line
2. He Starred in 'The Lincoln Lawyer'
McConaughey took a two-year break from acting after Ghosts, presumably to raise his two young children, but his return to Hollywood couldn't have gone better. With 2011's The Lincoln Lawyer, a crime drama starring the actor as a defense attorney who takes on a dangerous client, McConaughey threw expectations out the window. He received rave reviews for his performance ( "what happened — did Matthew McConaughey roll out of bed one morning and decide that, after smiling through one too many schlocky movies, playing the pretty boy opposite Sandra-Kate-Jennifer, he wanted to do something decent?," said one) and earned the public's respect. Image: Lionsgate
3. He Made 2012 Count — and Almost Got an Oscar Nomination
After the success of The Lincoln Lawyer, McConaughey didn't waste time waiting for the perfect role to come to him. He appeared in four extremely different movies — Magic Mike, Bernie, Killer Joe, and The Paperboy — and while not all of them were well-received by critics, they did cement him as an actor to watch. Bernie did the best of the three, earning a 90 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and giving McConaughey a National Society of Film Critics' award. Magic Mike got less critical acclaim, but audiences ate it up, and it earned a whopping $158 million at the box office. McConaughey's performance as Dallas, an untrustworthy strip club owner, was so unpredictably great that when Oscar nominations were announced and he wasn't on the list, it came as a shock. Killer Joe and The Paperboy didn't go over quite as well, but McConaughey's diverse, surprising performances were noted as highlights. Image: Warner Bros.
4. He Stayed Humble
By the beginning of 2013, critics and audiences alike had realized that McConaughey was trying to re-vamp his career, and that he was succeeding with surprising speed. Still, when April's Mud was released, seemingly everyone who left the theater found themselves marveling over the depth of the actor's performance and his ability to transcend expectations. Despite all the acclaim, though, McConaughey stayed grateful. He gave a number of interviews about his sudden rise to serious actor, and in each, he acknowledged how he'd be nowhere without the romantic comedies that gave him fame (and the money to be picky with roles.) As for the reason for his change in career, he said interesting, thought-provoking things like this: "I want to be able to hang my hat on the humanity of the character every day."
Image: Lionsgate
5. He Decided to Star in 'Dallas Buyers Club'
Everything McConaughey has done in the past few years, every nuanced, serious role that he's taken, has led to Dallas Buyers Club. For his role as an AIDS patient, the actor lost close to 40 pounds, a shocking amount for the normally robust star. Still, it looks like the extreme diet paid off, because Dallas Buyers Club received outstanding reviews when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, with McConaughey's performance in particular getting enormous praise. Oscar, meet Matthew.
