Matthew McConaughey

<p>Matthew David McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas, on November 4, 1969, and grew up in Longview, Texas. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993, he made his breakthrough debut in Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age cult classic <em>Dazed and Confused</em> (1993), delivering the immortal ad-libbed line "Alright, alright, alright." Following high-profile starring roles in <em>A Time to Kill</em> (1996), <em>Contact</em> (1997), and a string of blockbuster romantic comedies during the 2000s, McConaughey consciously redirected his career in what film critics celebrated as the "McConaissance."</p><p>This transformative creative resurgence saw McConaughey undertake demanding, complex dramatic roles in <em>The Lincoln Lawyer</em> (2011), <em>Mud</em> (2012), and <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em> (2013). For his harrowing portrayal of Ron Woodroof—an HIV/AIDS patient who smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas—in <em>Dallas Buyers Club</em> (2013), McConaughey lost 50 pounds and won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He followed this with an Emmy-nominated performance as Rust Cohle in HBO’s neo-noir masterpiece <em>True Detective</em> (2014) and Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic <em>Interstellar</em> (2014).</p><p>In 2020, McConaughey published his intimate memoir <em>Greenlights</em>, which spent multiple weeks at number one on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list. Through his "just keep livin Foundation," he empowers high school students by providing after-school wellness and fitness programs across the United States. In 2019, he became a professor of practice at the Moody College of Communication at UT Austin, mentoring the next generation of storytellers.</p>