Leading men are flexing new muscles in edgier roles
Chilling or cheesy, he bares more than flesh
Matthew McConaughey is serving notice to fans who have fixated on his rom-com roles: There are many more sides to the man, and soon he will reveal all.
“I’m looking to shake things up,” says McConaughey, 42, who did just that when he made his debut at the Cannes Film Festival with the edgy films Mud and The Paperboy.
“They have some good shock value to them,” McConaughey says.
It’s hard to go more shocking than his role in The Paperboy, in which he plays a self-loathing gay newspaper reporter hiding his promiscuous sexual behavior. He even has a scene in which he’s discovered naked, gagged and bloody on a plastic tarp in a seedy hotel room.
He says he didn’t hesitate to take the part when approached by writer/director Lee Daniels.
“The one thing I insisted on (with Daniels) was it had to be more than shock. Because when you cast me for this part, there is going to be an inherent shock value.”
The film, which also stars Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, is scheduled for release in Europe in the fall, but no domestic dates have been set.
McConaughey stays in the non-romance channel with Mud (no release date yet), in which he plays a fugitive being pursued by bounty hunters, alongside Reese Witherspoon and Michael Shannon. Jeff Nichols directs.
The surprises will continue. McConaughey will play a seedy hit man in William Friedkin’s Killer Joe (“it’s a wild ride of a movie”) opening in select cities on July 27, and he’ll star as an ambitious male stripper in the
“When you cast me for this part (in Paperboy), there is going to be an inherent shock value.”
Matthew McConaughey
Steven Soderbergh-directed Magic Mike (June 29) alongside Channing Tatum.
McConaughey appears naked in Paperboy, but he assures that he looks “much better” in Magic Mike. Playing a stripper is serious gym motivation.
“You wanna see a guy get in shape, tell him his (butt) is going to be 40-foot-high on a screen,” McConaughey says, laughing. “It’s me doing everything with the spray tans and all. It’s going to be a hoot.”
McConaughey even croons in the part, happily breaking into a song during an interview, deftly dedicating the song to “the ladies of Tampa.”
“It’s pretty good and cheesy,” he adds, needlessly.