American · b. 1969
Matthew McConaughey is an American actor and author. Born in Uvalde, Texas, and raised in Longview, he studied film at the University of Texas at Austin. He was cast in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused in 1993 and became a star in the 1990s with films such as A Time to Kill. In the 2000s he was known mostly for romantic comedies. From 2011 he moved to more demanding roles in Killer Joe, Mud, The Wolf of Wall Street and Interstellar. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014 and starred in the first season of the HBO series True Detective. Greenlights, his first book, appeared in 2020. It draws on decades of personal diaries and became a number one New York Times bestseller. He followed it with the children's book Just Because and the illustrated Poems & Prayers. He also teaches at the University of Texas and co-founded the Just Keep Livin Foundation.