Matthew McConaughey

Born: 4th November 1969
Where: Uvalde, Texas, USA

A chance meeting in a Texan hotel bar led to the aspiring actor landing his first break in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused.

He was drinking with casting agent and producer Don Phillips, who introduced him to Linklater who cast him in the slacker comedy.

From an initial appearance in just three scenes, McConaughey's role swelled to more than 300 lines for the 1993 movie.

Since that early break, he has gone on to star in such lead roles as Jennifer Lopez's love interest in The Wedding Planner and a gung-ho salvage expert in Sahara.

The youngest son of a petrol station owner and a teacher, McConaughey quit Texas to work in Australia for a year washing dishes and shovelling chicken manure.

Back in the US, he contemplated a career in law but eventually studied film at the University of Texas and graduated in 1992.

Whilst there, he began his acting career; appearing in student films and local beer commercials in Texas, as well as directing short films, including Chicano Chariots.

After Dazed and Confused, he came back down to earth with a role in the low-budget Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (alongside Renee Zellwegger).

In 1996, he raised his profile with two roles - as a suspected killer in Lone Star and crucially as an idealistic lawyer in A Time To Kill opposite Sandra Bullock and Kevin Spacey.

The following year he was first choice to play Leonardo DiCaprio's role in Titanic but opted for Robert Zemeckis' Contact (for which he earned comparisons with Paul Newman).

Next up was the Afro-American slave drama Amistas, directed by Steven Spielberg.

The reality show parody EDtv suffered comparison to the earlier The Truman Show but McConaughey's stock rose with the U-boat drama U-571.

Offscreen, he also gained a certain notoriety in 1999 when police were called to his home in Austin, Texas and dicovered him playing the bongos in the nude.

He was cast as the love interest of Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner and also starred in Bill Paxton's directorial debut, the horror-thriller Frailty.

In 2002, he and won praise from fantasy fans as the American dragon fighter in the surprisingly fresh sci-fi thriller Reign of Fire.

The followng year, McConaughey starred opposite Kate Hudson in the romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

When he is not filming, McConaughey has a 1,600-acre ranch in West Texas and also enjoys solo road trips in South America.

Recent work includes the role of salvage expert Dirk Pitt in the adventure caper Sahara alongside current squeeze Penelope Cruz.