Matthew McConaughey
Five years after Interstellar, the man who played Coop seems to be lost in space. Has he made the wrong choices?
Many years ago, I was cursed,” said Matthew McConaughey as beetle in Kubo And The Two Strings, talking like a man who knows of what he speaks. In the 2000s, McConaughey’s own career seemed to be cursed. From 1999’s edtv to 2009’s Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, his talents were too often squandered on fluff: witness Fool’s Gold or Surfer, Dude, if you dare.
After the McConaissance years, his quality control seems to have slipped back. Voice work in Sing and Kubo aside, his recent films have struggled on two fronts – barely qualifying as crowdpleasers or critics’ curios.
This situation seems all wrong (all wrong, all wrong) when you consider how good McConaughey is. He earned his breakthrough in Dazed & Confused, putting his easy charm to unflattering uses as sleazy Wooderson. He then proved himself in support roles from Amistad to Contact, before rejections (see Titanic), bad luck and too many romcoms mounted. Although edtv boasted his prescient pairing with Woody Harrelson, it seemed mistimed beside 1999’s similarly themed The Truman Show. He was never bad, but even his marvellously full-bore embodiment of roaring
American machismo in Reign Of Fire failed to ignite audience interest.
But his decision to “fuck the bucks” and take risks paid off after 2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Besides show-stealing supports in Bernie, Magic Mike and
The Wolf Of Wall Street, he banked indie cred in Killer Joe and Mud, magnetised in True Detective and earned his Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, before cashing in smartly with Interstellar.
Since then, his bad luck has been bewildering. Despite the promising combination of Stephen King/Idris Elba, The Dark Tower tanked. Strong-sounding collaborations with Gus Van Sant (The Sea Of Trees), Steven Knight (Serenity), Stephen Gaghan (Gold) and Yann Demange (White Boy Rick) also flopped, despite McConaughey making absolute character immersion look seamless.
If his commitment cannot be faulted, nor can his choices, in theory. Despite audiences’ disinterest, his team-up with indie wildcard Harmony Korine for The Beach Bum sounded promising; likewise, he might have fun with Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. “I’m still getting off on acting,” he said recently. Perhaps misfires go with his hunger for risky choices. Hit the right one and audiences will, surely, get off on him again. KH