Mighty Matt: The Surfer Dude's Hollywood Ride

The son of a former Green Bay Packers player and school teacher mother, Texan Matty Boy travelled round Australia for a year after graduating high school before returning to Austin to study law. He soon realised that he'd rather raise the bar on the silver screen than study for it and began starring in student films.

A chance meeting with a casting director in a bar, a recurring theme for the McSter, led to him landing the part of David Wooderson in Richard LInklater's seminal slacker pic where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ben Affleck and Milla Jovovich.

Matteo used all his southern charm to parlay his cool-as-hell turn in Dazed into several back-to-back movies including The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Boys on the Side and the superb John Sayles drama Lone Star.

He got his big break into the Hollywood big time, though, when Joel Schumacher plucked him from relative obscurity to star in this John Grisham adaptation alongside Sammy Jackson and soon-to-be flame Sandy Bullock.

After getting all hot and steamy with Miss Bullock for camp helmer Schumacher in Kill, the M Word was paired opposite everyone's favourite double Oscar winner Jodie Foster for this Robert Zemeckis directed space age extravaganza.

Foster's character Eleanor Arroway finds proof of intelligent aliens, however she comes up against the Daddy Mac's man of faith Palmer Joss who engages both her noggin and her nether regions in this groovy sci-fi spectacular.

After wowing the ladies with another, quite literally, stellar turn in Contact, M and M went Spielberg on us with a very moving turn as Baldwin in the slave drama Amistad. He then followed that up with this Richard Linklater reunion.

Starring alongside uber hunk Ethan Hawke, Jericho's Skeet Ulrich and intense character actor Vincent D'Onofrio, McConaughey steals the show as the oldest of the four Willis brothers in the Western story of the notorious bank robbers.

Even though it didn't make nearly as much money as bigshot director Ron Howard would have liked, this endearing romantic comedy opened a whole 'nother genre for the boy Matty which he went on to dominate.

Starring alongside sitcom queen Jenna Elfman, real-life buddy Woody Harrelson and the sublime Liz Hurley, the Texan Tornado played video store clerk Ed "Eddie" Pekurny who's life is shadowed 24/7 for a reality TV show.

The McMeister hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 1999 after he was found dancing around naked and playing bongo drums with a friend, actor Cole Hauser, at his Austin home. He was fined $50 for noise disturbance.

He recovered to play a submarine officer in 2000's moderately successful U-571 before he bumped and ground the night away with Jenny Lopez in this Adam Shankam romcom that doubled its budget at the worldwide box office.

You've gotta love the lad McConaughey for his next big career choice following the indie drama Frailty. He shaved his head and went mano-a-mano with CGI dragons and Welsh wonder Christian Bale for X-Files dude Rob Bowman.
It didn't quite light up the cinemas like distributor Buena Vista imagined, however it's great fun watching the M Bomb chew up the scenery as the superbly named Denton Van Zan while trying to work which exotic country Bale's accent is modelled on.

The Torso King went back to basics, and more successful territory, for his next silver screen outing that saw him clash romantically with rising star Kate Hudson who seemed intent on becoming the new Goldie Hawn (her actual Mum).
Not only did he straddle the young ingenue, but also this impressive Triumph motorbike in the blockbuster that coined $177m from Austin to Oz and launched the two stars ever higher into the celebrity and movie biz stratosphere.

It didn't take a genius to work out that sparks were going to fly between the Beach Boy and the Cruzer on the set of this silly action romp based on Clive Cussler's novels, which introduced his well known adventurer Dirk Pitt to celluloid.

Matty Boy romanced Penelope on and off screen, apparently, as the duo and Steve Zahn's, well, zany Al Giordino go in search of a lost Civil War battleship in the desert for director Breck Eisner who saw the film tank on release.

After Sahara failed to blitz the box office, McConaughey decided to pair up with Al Pacino in the gambling drama Two for the Money. Despite baring his ridiculously gym toned bod throughout, the flimsy plot sadly meant another roast turkey for M and M.

What's Matt to do? Head back to romcom territory, of course, this time with Carrie herself Sarah Jessica Parker. Playing a middle-aged slacker who won't leave his parent's house, the Daddy Mac steered this bad boy to big moolah.

Good sport as he is, the Big Mac was treated to a spot-on impersonation of himself by chum Matt Damon (which was filmed days earlier when Jason Bourne went on Dave Letterman's show) during the promotion of this drama. 

Starring alongside brooding Lost regular Matthew Fox, McConaughey plays an American football coach who must rebuild the side after a fatal plane crash. People lined up round the block Stateside to rent this sporty weepiefest.

Hollywood may be a tad tacky at times, but it ain't stupid and the powers that be teamed the boy McConaughey with his former flame and romcom partner Hudson for this quite ludicrous tale of an estranged couple's treasure hunting.

With Ray Winstone and Donnie Sutherland hamming it up alongside them it managed to make back its budget in the States before coining it in overseas, ahead of the Mac's memorable cameo in the upcoming Tropic Thunder.

You don't get a sixpack like this slouching on the couch. Matty Boy worked out with his saddly jockey pal Lance Armstrong and also took surfing lessons to prepare for his turn as surfer Steve Addington in the upcoming indie surfer comedy.

What better way to finish the McConaughey gallery than with a beaming Matt, who has even more reason to smile after seeing his Brazilian girlfriend Camila Alves give birth to son Levi Alves McConaughey this past July. You da man, M and M!