Matthew McConaughey

McConaughey has been married to Camila Alves since 2012. They have three children, Levi Alves McConaughey, Vida Alves McConaughey, and Livingston Alves McConaughey.

McConaughey is a Christian and attends a non-denominational church. He became a minority owner of Austin FC in 2019 and serves as the Major League Soccer club's "minister of culture."

McConaughey grew up in Longview, Texas, after being born in Uvalde. He spent a year in Australia after high school, attending Gorokan High School in New South Wales and working as an assistant for an attorney and as a bank teller. He later attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he changed his focus from law to film production and graduated in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in radio-television-film.

He began appearing in commercials and student films in the early 1990s. His first big-screen appearance was as Guy 2 in My Boyfriend's Back (1993), followed that year by Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. McConaughey's role as David Wooderson was initially small, but expanded substantially during production, helping establish him as a rising actor. He subsequently appeared in Angels in the Outfield, Boys on the Side, and Lone Star.

McConaughey became a leading man with A Time to Kill (1996), in which he played lawyer Jake Brigance opposite Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kevin Spacey. He followed it with dramatic roles in Contact (1997), Amistad (1997), and The Newton Boys (1998), as well as the comedies EDtv (1999) and U-571 (2000).

During the 2000s, he became closely associated with romantic comedies, including The Wedding Planner (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Failure to Launch (2006), Fool's Gold (2008), and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009). He also appeared in Sahara, We Are Marshall, and Tropic Thunder. People magazine named him "Sexiest Man Alive" in 2005.

After taking a two-year break from film acting, McConaughey returned to more dramatic material with The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), Killer Joe (2011), Mud (2012), The Paperboy (2012), and Magic Mike (2012). His shift away from romantic comedies became known as the "McConaissance." In Magic Mike, he played Dallas, a male strip-club owner and mentor to the younger performer played by Channing Tatum.

McConaughey portrayed Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club (2013), a role that required him to lose nearly 50 pounds. His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He also appeared as Mark Hanna in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

In the first season of HBO's True Detective (2014), McConaughey played detective Rust Cohle opposite Woody Harrelson, who portrayed Cohle's partner Martin Hart. McConaughey also executive produced the series and won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series. His performance earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

McConaughey starred as Cooper, a former NASA pilot, in Christopher Nolan's science-fiction film Interstellar (2014). His later film roles included The Sea of Trees, Free State of Jones, Gold, The Dark Tower, White Boy Rick, Serenity, The Beach Bum, and Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen.

He also supplied voices for the animated films Kubo and the Two Strings, Sing, and Sing 2, and voiced Elvis Presley in the Netflix series Agent Elvis. After several years away from feature acting, he returned in 2025 with The Rivals of Amziah King and The Lost Bus.

McConaughey began teaching as a visiting instructor at the University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication in 2015. He became a professor of practice in 2019 and taught a Script to Screen film production class.

He founded the just keep livin foundation, which helps teenagers lead active lives and make healthy choices. He published the memoir Greenlights in 2020, followed by the children's book Just Because in 2023 and Poems & Prayers in 2025.

In 2022, McConaughey spoke at a White House press briefing about the Uvalde school shooting and advocated for background checks, a higher minimum purchase age for AR-15 rifles, waiting periods, and red-flag laws. He had previously considered running for governor of Texas but said he would not enter the 2022 election.