Matthew McConaughey“Now I've made it. Wait until you see the roles I could take after this. You're going to see my gut hanging over, plus 22 [pounds]. It'll be a whole new kind of sexy!” source: www.rottentomatoes.com |
McConaughey is an actor who seems to be checking all the boxes on a trip to late-career renaissance. He's stopped doing the roles that made him famous, eschewing romantic comedies that were the staple of his early career for meatier dramatic roles. He's leaving an indelible mark on movies even when he appears for a short time. The humming and chest-pounding that were entertaining enough to make the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street were all his invention. He certainly seems to be taking a queue from Christian Bale, with giving up his lady-friendly physique for roles, and even working with Christopher Nolan this year on Interstellar.
While he still probably lacks the range of a true topflight actor, his recent roles have shown he has the chops for serious movies. His laidback attitude that was so easy to see in his early movies probably held him back in terms of the roles he's been offered. For an actor that Hollywood wants to pigeonhole as a handsome face, it's a near-constant fight early in their careers to avoid being typecast, and McConaughey was probably too relaxed to fight upstream against casting directors.
Rarely is an actor's career so easy to partition into eras as McConaughey's. He has his early, breakout years, his rom-com years, and now his fight for respectability years. I've seen several of his fans postulating that this recent turn in dramatic roles signifies his growth into the next Daniel Day-Lewis or Sean Penn. Considering the quote above is the best one I could find from him on the subject of acting, we need to pump the brakes on that idea, but the next Paul Newman could definitely be in the cards.
While he still probably lacks the range of a true topflight actor, his recent roles have shown he has the chops for serious movies. His laidback attitude that was so easy to see in his early movies probably held him back in terms of the roles he's been offered. For an actor that Hollywood wants to pigeonhole as a handsome face, it's a near-constant fight early in their careers to avoid being typecast, and McConaughey was probably too relaxed to fight upstream against casting directors.
Rarely is an actor's career so easy to partition into eras as McConaughey's. He has his early, breakout years, his rom-com years, and now his fight for respectability years. I've seen several of his fans postulating that this recent turn in dramatic roles signifies his growth into the next Daniel Day-Lewis or Sean Penn. Considering the quote above is the best one I could find from him on the subject of acting, we need to pump the brakes on that idea, but the next Paul Newman could definitely be in the cards.