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CNN SPOTLIGHT

CNN SPOTLIGHT: Matthew McConaughey

Aired March 1, 2014 - 19:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The Texas-sized talent, with charm to burn.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, ACTOR: Loves life, loves women, good man, good family.

TURNER: Matthew McConaughey. His journey from promising newcomer...

MCCONAUGHEY: All right, all right, all right.

I'm young and I'm inexperienced.

TURNER: ... to rom-com king, a career that veered off track. He took himself out of the game.

MCCONAUGHEY: I needed to pull back on what I had been doing. I didn't work for two years.

What you say, boys?

TURNER: To plot a comeback nobody saw coming.

MCCONAUGHEY: Welcome to the Dallas Buyers Club.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Best performance by an actor in a leading role.

TURNER: The McConaissance that put him in the Oscar race.

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm having a great time.

TURNER: Tonight, "CNN SPOTLIGHT: Matthew McConaughey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TURNER: Hello, everybody. I'm Nischelle Turner. And welcome to the Texas hill country, the place where Matthew McConaughey was born and raised and still calls home.

This part of the country has produced some pretty colorful characters, as well as one of Hollywood's most intriguing leading men. And after a career spanning two decade decades, Matthew is getting his due for playing, in fact, another remarkable Texan in one of the year's most celebrated movies.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TURNER (voice-over): One story rooted in Texas now Oscar-nominated, its Texas-grown lead actor Oscar nominated, too.

MCCONAUGHEY: Welcome to the Dallas Buyers Club.

I'm very fortunate that I got to be in what I think is a damn good movie.

TURNER: Matthew McConaughey, in his moment.

MCCONAUGHEY: This is celebration time now.

TURNER: The actor with the major award season mojo.

MCCONAUGHEY: Feels good.

TURNER: A Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, unending praise for his portrayal of the real-life character Ron Woodroof in "Dallas Buyers Club."

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: You look great.

MCCONAUGHEY: Well, actually, I look amazing.

TURNER: "Dallas Buyers Club" and its star, both quintessentially Texas, both basking in award season glow.

(on camera): You have got to be having the time of your life.

MCCONAUGHEY: Yes. No, I am. Yes, I have been doing this for 22 years, and first time nominated, first time really going around an award season with a film and a performance that's had some light shown on it.

The film and the work is preceding me everywhere I go. And I will talk about "Dallas Buyers Club" and my experience until the cows go home.

ELLEN DEGENERES, HOST, "THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW": You should explain what the buyers club is, what the Dallas Buyers Club is.

MCCONAUGHEY: The Dallas Buyers Club -- "Dallas Buyers Club," and it's about a guy, a true-life story.

JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO": You grew up in Texas.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": It's just a wild movie and you lost so much weight for this role and this character.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have to congratulate you, because this truly has been a great year for you.

DEGENERES: You are so brilliant. MCCONAUGHEY: Thank you.

DEGENERES: The film is so good.

JAMES LIPTON, "INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO:": We will begin where we always begin. Where were you born?

MCCONAUGHEY: Uvalde, Texas.

TURNER (voice-over): Uvalde, 7.6 square miles in Southwest Texas.

MATT SEITZ, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": He's an authentic Texas character.

TURNER: Fellow Texan Matt profiled McConaughey early in the actor's career.

SEITZ: That part of Texas is flat very and very dusty, and in some ways, kind of existentially freaky, I mean, if you didn't grow up. If you did, it feels normal.

TURNER: Matthew is born the youngest son to Kay and Jim McConaughey, a former-football-player-turned-oil-pipe salesman.

Jim moves the family to East Texas during the oil boom, where Matthew plays on the golf team and wins an award for best looks at Longview High. After graduation, he enrolls in the University of Texas at Austin.

Always a good student, he reveals on "Inside the Actors Studio" that acting wasn't in his original plan.

MCCONAUGHEY: I was headed towards law school. So, I started off with liberal arts philosophy, then to go to law school. And then I switched to go to film school after my sophomore year.

TURNER (on camera): It's here at this Austin hotel where a chance meeting becomes Matthew's life-changing moment, film students drinking at the bar, when he learns a casting director working with independent filmmaker Richard Linklater is sitting nearby. Matthew introduces himself and somehow gets an audition for Linklater's next movie, "Dazed and Confused."

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm thinking about getting back in school, though, man.

TURNER (voice-over): "Dazed and Confused" releases in 1993.

MCCONAUGHEY: How's it going, man?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Hey.

TURNER: The character, Wooderson, in only a handful of scenes, steals them.

MCCONAUGHEY: All right, all right, all right.

TURNER: And all right, all right, all right becomes McConaughey's lifelong catch phrase.

MCCONAUGHEY: First scene I was in, and those were the first two words out of my mouth. So it's a little fallback for me to remember where I started.

TURNER (on camera): Yes, but it's soothing, because it kind of gets everybody in the mood, like, all right, all right, all right.

MCCONAUGHEY: Most people know where it came from. And there's something to just three affirmations said that way, is like yes. All right.

All right, all right, all right.

TURNER (voice-over): A sequel to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" follows and a full-fledged acting career begins to flourish, as he hopscotches through movies like "Boys on the Side" with Drew Barrymore.

By the time "Lone Star" comes out in 1996, Matthew McConaughey is becoming a marquee name. While on the set of "Lone Star," luck strikes Matthew again. He receives a call from director Joel Schumacher, who is casting for a film adaptation of John Grisham's bestseller "A Time to Kill."

SEITZ: He was originally going to audition for a different part, but he ended up impressing Joel Schumacher to a degree that he read him for the part of Jake Brigance.

TURNER: Jake Brigance, the lead role, is based on Grisham's personal experiences as a young lawyer.

MCCONAUGHEY: I am young, and I am inexperienced.

TURNER: Studio executives balk at putting a relative unknown in the lead, until:

SEITZ: He was personally approved by John Grisham. And this was a big deal, because this was not a small movie. This was a big, expensive Hollywood movie, and the leading role was played by a guy that nobody had heard of. And he was just some guy from Texas.

TURNER: The marketing campaign heats up on the eve of the film's release in the summer of 1996.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember this name and remember this face. He's the star of "A Time to Kill," and his name is Matthew McConaughey. And he will bring lots of people into your theaters.

(APPLAUSE)

TURNER: Eighteen years later, he would describe "A Time to Kill" as the film which made him instantaneously famous.

MCCONAUGHEY: Kaboom, in one weekend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over one weekend. MCCONAUGHEY: Yes.

TURNER: Coming up: the handsome leading man taking Hollywood by storm and keeps the tabloids talking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Drop the case.

MCCONAUGHEY: I quit now and all this is for nothing. No.

TURNER (voice-over): With the success of "A Time to Kill," Matthew McConaughey is suddenly a hot commodity.

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm young and I'm inexperienced.

GLENN WHIPP, "THE LOS ANGELES TIMES": It did establish him as a leading man. You sort of have that sort of pivotal moment, where are you going to go with this?

TURNER: McConaughey goes with "Contact," a sci-fi-themed film from powerhouse director Robert Zemeckis.

MCCONAUGHEY: Palmer Joss.

SEITZ: He was playing a kind of charismatic preacher character in "Contact."

MCCONAUGHEY: I couldn't imagine living in a world where God didn't exist.

SEITZ: Very awkward fit, I thought.

MCCONAUGHEY: This case isn't about murder.

WHIPP: Steven Spielberg puts him for "Amistad."

SEITZ: Another lawyer, but this time with muttonchops.

WHIPP: It didn't really connect with the Academy and it didn't really connect with audiences.

MARTIN LANDAU, ACTOR: How about sex?

TURNER: In 1999, he stars in "Edtv."

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm sorry, Al, but I'm going to have to pass. And it's not an age thing, because you are still a handsome man.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: A comedy about a guy who lets a camera crew follow his every move.

MCCONAUGHEY: Maybe this isn't a good idea.

TURNER: Despite another A-list director in Ron Howard, "Edtv" gets pour reception.

WHIPP: The movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.

TURNER: The film may not connect with moviegoers, but McConaughey can identify with a character whose personal life is exposed for all to see.

ROB REINER, ACTOR: Yes. Yes, you're on television.

TURNER: The paparazzi capture him with a succession of leading ladies.

MCCONAUGHEY: Look, we all play games in dating. We have all played games.

TURNER: Patricia Arquette, Ashley Judd, Penelope Cruz, and Sandra Bullock, his co-star from "A Time to Kill."

MCCONAUGHEY: Lack of privacy is the toughest part. My private life is mine, and I didn't like sharing it before I was famous, when no one gave a damn about what it was. Now everyone wants to know.

TURNER: Protecting that private life is no simple matter.

MCCONAUGHEY: It takes a little moxie and a little work to defend it. If you really want to, I could go get a place and put up 40-foot walls and be a recluse and not have any trouble whatsoever. But that isn't what makes me tick.

TURNER: What makes him tick is a subject of curiosity. In 1999, fans learned he dances to the beat of a different drum, specifically, a bongo.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey is free on bail.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was arrested early this morning at his home in the Tarrytown neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police say he was apparently intoxicated, dancing in the living room naked and playing bongo drums.

MCCONAUGHEY: Don't want to rent a place there, but it was a nice day for a night.

TURNER: The incident becomes so famous, it even gets a puppet parody treatment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Through the window, I could see a nude while male dancing and playing bongo drums.

TURNER: Off screen, McConaughey may live an unorthodox life, but his movie roles are becoming more and more conventional.

MCCONAUGHEY: This man is strong.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: He's naked.

MCCONAUGHEY: This man is sturdy.

TURNER: Hollywood leans on him for a series of romantic comedies, "The Wedding Planner" opposite Jennifer Lopez, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" with Kate Hudson, and "Failure to Launch" with Sarah Jessica Parker.

SEITZ: Commercially, they were all moneymakers. He has nothing but fond memories with making them.

TURNER: Critics, though, aren't so fond.

SEITZ: I don't know what they were trying to turn him into. He's, in fact, nothing like this rather tedious, handsome man that you're seeing in rom-coms.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: You live with your parents?

MCCONAUGHEY: Is that a problem?

TURNER: The roles may not require him to flex his acting muscles, but they do show off his smoking bod. He's not shy about displaying his assets off screen either.

MCCONAUGHEY: I like to be in touch with my body, my mind and my spirit.

WHIPP: You would open up a "People" magazine or a "Us Weekly" and there he would be without his shirt on.

TURNER: In 2005, that pecks appeal makes him "People" magazine's sexiest man alive. Female fans may drool, but, by 2007, McConaughey's given his heart to a single lady, Brazilian bombshell Camila Alves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Camilla is a model, a host and a handbag designer.

TURNER: In 2008, Matthew and Camilla welcome their first child, son Levi.

MCCONAUGHEY: We're having a great time him. I'm a father. I have got a woman that I love and care about. And it's her and I.

TURNER: His personal life has come together. But, professionally, the picture is mixed.

MCCONAUGHEY: You're doing a great job. Still here, right?

TURNER: "Fool's Gold, "Surfer, Dude," and "Sahara" fail to excite critics.

SEITZ: I think the media was beginning to tire of him a little bit. If his name was attached to a movie, critics were just lying in wait to trash it.

TURNER: Still, there are occasional glimpses of what McConaughey is truly capable of.

MCCONAUGHEY: What are you celebrating?

SEITZ: "Reign of Fire."

MCCONAUGHEY: One dragon down, three men dead, oh, yes. At that rate, we might just be getting somewhere in about 320 years.

SEITZ: There's a flash of the old McConaughey that caught everybody's eye in "Dazed and Confused."

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm a football coach. Let push them to the limit, man, huh?

MCCONAUGHEY: It was more than making a movie. It was a piece of art that also was very connected with real life.

We are Marshall.

SEITZ: He's wonderful in "We Are Marshall."

MCCONAUGHEY: Any time you have a true story...

SEITZ: Matthew McConaughey should have been making like four "We Are Marshall"s a year. I think he would have had four Oscars by now if he had.

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm flattered, really.

TURNER: Instead, as his 30s evaporate, McConaughey decides to make another romantic comedy, "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."

MCCONAUGHEY: I will be more than happy to take off the rest of my clothes to prove it.

SEITZ: "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" comes out. He's 40. There's got to be a moment where you look in the mirror. Everybody looks in the mirror when they're 40 and says, what the hell am I doing with my life?

MCCONAUGHEY: I'm trying to make it right.

TURNER: Coming up: Matthew McConaughey takes stock.

MCCONAUGHEY: We have got too much riding on this thing to leave it to chance.

TURNER: And decides to go in a bold new direction.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Mr. Woodroof, we estimate you have 30 days left.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: Deep down, you're a big sweetheart.

MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, look who's got me pegged.

TURNER (voice-over): By 2009, McConaughey is the indisputable king of the rom-com. But he's about to make a major professional shift.

MCCONAUGHEY: I had a pretty good sense that I needed to pull back on what I had been doing.

TURNER: He pulls back from the bankable comedic roles he's become known for and steps out of the spotlight.

MCCONAUGHEY: I didn't work for two years, not because I didn't want to, but because I said I don't want to do things that I have been doing. Those are fine. I enjoy those. I may do them again. But, right now, I want to do something different.

TURNER: That something different, dramatic roles in smaller independent films.

MCCONAUGHEY: Somewhere in that two years, I think I gained a little anonymity, and I think I became some people's new, fresh, good idea. And I got some calls and some offers for some roles that did scare me, in a good way, and I went to work.

MCCONAUGHEY: Work on films like "The Lincoln Lawyer," where McConaughey plays a defense attorney with a crisis of conscience.

I'm trying to make it right!

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: I never will!

TURNER: "Lincoln Lawyer" sets him on a path toward darker and grittier roles, next playing a detective with a side gig as a contract assassin in "Killer Joe."

MCCONAUGHEY: You want me off the job? Say the word.

TURNER: He follows with a performance as a tree-dwelling fugitive in the critically acclaimed "Mud."

MCCONAUGHEY: What you say, boys?

WHIPP: When he started doing these interesting, small movies again, they weren't seen by a ton of moviegoers, but they were seen by the right people in Hollywood.

TURNER: Top Hollywood director Steven Soderbergh takes notice of McConaughey's new work and casts him in a role that brings an entirely different kind of exposure.

MCCONAUGHEY: The law says that you cannot touch, but I see -- I see a lot of lawbreakers up in this house.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TURNER: McConaughey works on-screen magic in a supporting role as a club owner and stripper stud in 2012's "Magic Mike."

SEITZ: It's like he's performing to buy his soul out of hell. Like, that's the level of intensity that he brings to it.

TURNER: The success of "Magic Mike" gives McConaughey the momentum to next take on his most challenging project to date.

WHIPP: "Dallas Buyers Club" script had been sitting on his desk for four or five years, and this was the movie that he really wanted to get made.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Mr. Woodroof, you have tested positive for HIV.

TURNER: "Dallas Buyers Club" is inspired by the true story of Ron Woodroof, a hard-living Texan diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-'80s who works around the system to increase access to medications.

MCCONAUGHEY: They have got good meds out of Mexico that's better than what you can get here in the states.

TURNER: The story is a tough sell and is turned down by Hollywood more than 100 times.

MCCONAUGHEY: Welcome to the "Dallas Buyers Club."

TURNER: The movie finally shoots in 2012 for an estimated $5 million in just 25 days. McConaughey's physical transformation is jaw- dropping.

MCCONAUGHEY: The weight loss was my starting point, because it's something I knew I needed to do. And I wasn't go cheat, because if I didn't do it right, that would be embarrassing. And you would be watching the movie, going, he doesn't look like he's sick.

There ain't nothing out there that can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days.

TURNER: When "Dallas Buyers Club" premieres, the drumbeat of Oscar buzz for the actor starts instantly.

WHIPP: My first impressions of "Dallas Buyers Club" were like most people. It was just, wow, he is on a roll.

TURNER: McConaughey sweeps more than a dozen film industry nominations and awards, now parents of three, his wife, Camilla, by his side every step of the way.

(on camera): You won the Golden Globe. Were you genuinely surprised? There's been this groundswell of momentum for you.

(CROSSTALK)

MCCONAUGHEY: Well, yes, I was genuinely surprised. I have been genuinely surprised with each victory that I have gotten, absolutely.

TURNER (voice-over): But few were surprised when McConaughey's Academy Awards nomination arrived in January.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Matthew McConaughey in "Dallas Buyers Club."

TURNER: Despite the acclaim and the possible Oscar in his near future, McConaughey says he's just getting started.

MCCONAUGHEY: It's a wonderful moment in my career that is in the middle of its approach.

TURNER: Along his approach, a role as a detective troubled by his past and the search for a serial killer in the HBO series "True Detective."

MCCONAUGHEY: The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.

WHIPP: He's just killing it week after week.

SEITZ: Matthew McConaughey is conducting his career as if he expects to be dead at any moment, and he wants to have a legacy.

TURNER: "True Detective" holds true to the type of projects and roles McConaughey seems to be gravitating towards these days.

MCCONAUGHEY: These have been really singularly focused, obsessed characters. A lot of them live on the fringes on society. But they're islands unto themselves. They make up their own rules, make up their own laws. They don't placate or pander to society. There's a freedom that I found in that.

MCCONAUGHEY: Move the money from your clients' pocket into your pocket.

TURNER: And then there's his appearance in that other Oscar-nominated film, "The Wolf of Wall Street."

SEITZ: He can come in and steal the movie in one scene.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Mr. Hanna, what can I bring for you on this glorious afternoon?

MCCONAUGHEY: You're going to bring us two absolute martinis. You know how I like them. After that, you're going to bring us two more, then two more after that every five minutes, until one of us passes out.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Excellent strategy, sir.

WHIPP: His two or three scenes in the beginning of that movie set the tone for the madness, the insanity that follows.

TURNER: As the insanity of Oscar season approaches its close, whether McConaughey brings home a trophy Sunday night or not, there's no question, he's having a golden moment.

MCCONAUGHEY: Part of the reason why I know of why I'm sitting here and why I have got a nomination is, I really just put my head down, and thought, process, process, process. Do the work, enjoying the experience so much, that that was reward enough.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TURNER: With star power as big as his home state of Texas, a family that he adores and finally some Oscar recognition, I would say things are turning out more than just all right, all right, all right for the Texas-boy-turned-Hollywood-superstar.

I'm Nischelle Turner. Thanks for watching. Good night.