Handsome, rangy, laid-back and talented Matthew McConaughey made his screen debut with a small role in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993) and within only a few years found himself one of Hollywood's hottest leading men with critics and fans alike enthusiastically comparing him to Paul Newman, and hailing him as the next Tom Cruise.

Born in Uvalde, Texas but raised in Longview, Texas, McConaughey is the youngest of three brothers. His father Jim McConaughey had spent the 1967-68 football season as a member of the Green Bay Packers. His mother was a substitute teacher. A former high school jock who was voted "Most Handsome" by his senior class, McConaughey spent the year following graduation as an assistant in an Australian law firm. Upon his return to the U.S., McConaughey attended the University of Texas, Austin in 1993 graduated with a degree in film direction. Following his role as a aging druggie in Dazed and Confused, McConaughey played supporting roles in a couple more movies before gaining favorable notice as Drew Barrymore's patient and understanding policeman beau in Boys on the Side. It was his role as beloved late sheriff Buddy Deeds in John Sayles' Lone Star (1996) that attracted the most attention and soon afterward, he was given his first leading role, that of a lawyer, in Joel Schumacker's A Time to Kill (1996). Since that time, McConaughey's career has taken off. In 1998, he gave one of his strongest performances as one of four bank robbing brothers in Richard Linklater's first big budget film, The Newton Boys.