Matthew McConaughey has had two phases to his career. Bursting on the scene with 1996’s A Time to Kill, he seemed like the next superstar, but battles with substance abuse and a chronic lack of focus (probably not unconnected) left him nearly written off. However in the last decade McConaughey has climbed back into the top rungs of leading men, culminating in his Oscar for The Dallas Buyers Club and his astonishing performance in HBO’s True Detective’s first season (which would have won him an Emmy any other year than Bryan Cranston’s last on Breaking Bad). Since, he has kept up a steady stream of successes, and is always someone to pay attention to now in whatever projects he chooses to pursue.
Matthew McConaughey’s Best 10
1. True Detective Season One (2014-HBO) Det. Rust Cohle
2. A Time to Kill (1996) Jake Brigance
3. Tropic Thunder (2008) Rick Peck
4. Interstellar (2014) Cooper
5. Dallas Buyer’s Club (2013) Ron Woodroof
6. Amistad (1997) Roger Sherman Baldwin
7. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Mark Hanna
8. Contact (1997) Palmer Joss
9. Sing (2016) Buster Moon
10. The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) Mick Haller
Honorable Mention: Mud (2012) Mud
Oscars, Golden Globes & Emmys
Oscar Wins (1): Dallas Buyers Club (2014)
Oscar Nominations (1): Dallas Buyers Club (2014)
Golden Globe Wins (0): None
Golden Globe Nominations (2): Dallas Buyers Club (2014), True Detective (2015)
Emmy Wins (0): None
Emmy Nominations (2): True Detective (Actor & Producer)
My Favorite McConaughey Scene:
“Jake’s Closing Argument” from A Time to Kill (1996)
Next Film: McConaughey is working on three films for 2018: the crime drama White Boy Rick, Serenity with Anne Hathaway, and the comedy Beach Bum.
Hathaway looks a little bit like Julia Roberts on that photo. Weird
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Lol and that’s current from Serenity which is still shooting so maybe she’s morphing into Roberts…which is a weird transformation
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…..yeah ok, I see it. In fact, little creeped out by it now lol.
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🙂
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Great list! You need to see, if you haven’t, KILLER JOE! He is fantastically badass in that!
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Thank you good sir, I clearly need to watch Killer Joe and Fraility, but these lists are ever changing. They’re updated every time someone who has a list in the archives releases a film or I watch an old film of theirs so they’re ever-changing…..which as I do more and more of them is becoming quite a feat lol
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Oh absolutely! What’s great about such lists is someone will mention something obscure or missed first time round 😄
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I’ve gotten to see a lot of great films from the suggestions I get after the first “draft” goes up. I think this is about the 30th of these I’ve done. I try to alternate between actor/actress unless someone has passed that week (ex. Bill Paxton, Sam Shepard, John Hurt) in which case I do their career review instead of an obit, which I find really depressing to write. I’m thinking Kathy Bates may be next week. I usually try to tie it to a recent release….but this is August so I’m pretty much on my own here lol.
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Oh, Bill Paxton was just so young to die I thought. Kathy Bates is such a good choice; she usually steals everything she’s in.
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Alright, I think Kathy is next week’s pick…if everyone can manage to stay alive this week. EVERYONE STAY ALIVE!!!!
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Indeed, Jerry Lewis passed RIP.
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Sigh, I’m still doing Bates, I don’t have a good enough handle on Lewis’ entire body of work to do him justice, and a fair amount of it defies list entries; he was a comedic force in his heyday.
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NO ONE ELSE DIE!!! Or, I’m going to start to feel like I’m doing it.
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I am planning on it, but as I’ve learned only one knows exactly when my exit scene is and He’s not telling me, yet.
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“Frailty” for an honorable mention please…😎
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LEO! You know I have not seen it and that and Killer Joe clearly are being requested, so I will try to make it a point to watch both soon, but as you know, these are updated every time anyone in the archive releases a film or I watch an old film of theirs that I think cracks their top 10, so they are living (high maintenance lol) lists!
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Cool list. Question: Are you placing more weight on MM’s individual performance or the overall quality of the film? If it’s based on the film as a whole, I’d personally drop Dallas Buyers Club and Sing out of the top 10 and replace them with Mud and Magic Mike. In any event, I’d drop Sing out as his performance in Magic Mike is amazing.
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I base it on the film as a whole. I have not actually seen Magic Mike as it never really appealed to me, but I thought DBC was a really strong film, but the fun of lists is debating them, clearly from the other comments I need to watch Killing Joe and Fraility which I also have not (thise lists are always subject to revision!) thanks for commenting!
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Oh yes, I forgot about Killer Joe. That’s certainly his most menacing performance.
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Contact is a wonderful kind-of unsung film that is seriously flawed because of Matthew’s role in it. Weird performance, and a character that you could have lifted right out of the movie, and it would have made no difference. When there was a joke about it on Family Guy, I felt vindicated. In fact, I was not a fan of his first phase at all. His big breakout role could have been played by anyone and his Amistad performance was stagey and hyper-mannered.
But the second phase of his career… the second phase… let’s just say that something has obviously come over him, because he is incredibly talented and off the chart charismatic.
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He’s certainly much stronger as McConaughey 2.0, but I still think A Time to Kill is incredibly compelling, and-with The Firm and The Rainmaker-likely the only good Grisham adaptations we’ll ever get given Grisham’s opinion of selling the movie rights to his stuff after some of the crap that was adapted afterward.
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Gold was pretty good “You see these hands? These are my fathers hands” That line killed me.
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I liked Gold, but thought it ran overlong but it finished just outside the 10.
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Great list. It is interesting to see A Time to Kill so high up. Strangely for me, John Grisham books have never really shined in film. I think the only film based on a Grisham book I ever liked was Runaway Jury.
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I think A Time to Kill is still a powerful film. It and Runaway Jury are the only Grisham novels to film that have impressed me. The Firm was ok. But they stopped impressing him too which is why he stopped selling the rights a loooong time ago and he makes such ungodly money off the books he could care less if Hollywood doesn’t get them.
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