Dazed and Confused
This Richard Linklater-directed coming-of-age movie put McConaughey on the map. It was this role as a creepy-but-charming high school grad who's getting older while the girls stay the same age that birthed the actor's famous awards-season refrain, "Well... Alright, alright, alright."
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Years before he was named People's Sexiest Man Alive, the star was among the many actors happily collecting a pay check for a cheesy horror flick.
Angels in the Outfield
This remake of the 1951 film got a young McConaughey more attention toward the start of his career when he put on that adorable uniform to play some ball.
A Time to Kill
McConaughey's breakout role as a lawyer defending a black man who shot his daughter's two white rapists as racial tensions erupt all over their Mississippi town made the critics take notice.
Contact
McConaughey's a religious philosopher who doesn't agree with Jodie Foster's scientist about the origin of the otherworldly signals being picked up on Earth from a distant star—but he has the hots for her anyway in this adaptation of the Carl Sagan book.
EDtv
McConaughey is regular-guy Ed who gets his own reality show and havoc ensues as family and friends alternately want in and out of the action.
The Wedding Planner
Stealing the hearts of women everywhere, the Texas native plays a hot doctor who falls in love with his wedding planner played by Jennifer Lopez.
How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
In his first collaboration with Kate Hudson, he earned the crown of romantic-comedy king as his advertising exec and her magazine writer enter into a relationship not knowing they both have 10-day deadlines to, on his end, make her fall in love and, on hers, get him to dump her.
Failure to Launch
Somehow, McConaughey is a 35-year-old man-child who still lives with his parents and has no plans to leave... until his parents hire a confidence expert played by Sarah Jessica Parker to encourage him to move out.
Fool's Gold
Kate Hudson and McConaughey reunite as a recently divorced couple with amazing abs who rekindle their romance while searching for lost treasure.
Tropic Thunder
Rumor has it McConaughey took the place of Owen Wilson for this role as an anything-for-a-deal Hollywood agent whose client, played by Ben Stiller, is neck-deep in real trouble in the jungle while filming a Vietnam War movie with Robert Downey Jr.'s over-the-top method thesp, Jack Black's relapsing comedic actor and more.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
A spin on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, this comedy paints the heartthrob as yet another playboy whose ex-girlfriends come back to haunt him in order to teach him the value of true love. This may also have scared the actor out of the generic-rom-com genre for a good long while...
The Lincoln Lawyer
Long before he did Lincoln commercials, he starred as slick attorney Mickey Heller, who does business out of his Town Car, in the big-screen adaptation of the Michael Connelly-penned thriller.
Mud
A few kids stumble upon McConaughey's in-hiding fugitive in this Cannes and Sundance Film Festival fave and help him get a message to the love he left behind, played by Reese Witherspoon.
Magic Mike
McConaughey's famous torso is put to its best use yet as Florida strip club owner Dallas in this Steven Soderbergh-directed indie, which cost about $7 million to make and ended up with $113 million shoved down its pants at the box office.
Dallas Buyers Club, 2013
McConaughey dropped 47 pounds to play Ron Woodroof, who after being diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-1980s sets up a drug collective to smuggle not-yet-approved meds into the U.S. He won pretty much every acting award possible, including an Oscar in 2014.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Still on the thin side from Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey's a lecherous Wall Street tycoon who teaches Leonardo DiCaprio that the only thing more enticing to the nose than cocaine is the smell of money.
True Detective
Not a movie but McConaughey's movie-star power and his character's dark, cryptic musings about life helped make the first riveting season of the HBO series about a hunt for a small-town serial killer a must-watch.
Interstellar,
The McConaissance continued as he returned to big-budget action as an astronaut who sets off to find a new place for human beings to live as Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable in Christopher Nolan's latest mind-bender.
Sing
In this animated film, McConaughey plays a koala named Buster Moon who is trying to keep his old theater in business by holding a live singing competition show. If you've ever wanted to hear "Call Me Maybe" with a deep Southern drawl, this is your chance.
Gold
Once again on the hunt for treasure, the Academy Award winner stars in the crime drama film as lead character Kenny Wells, a prospector who sets off on a journey to find riches in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia.
The Dark Tower
Based on the bestselling novel series of the same name by Stephen King, the dark fantasy western movie shows McConaughey in a more twisted light as timeless sorcerer Walter Padick, who seeks to reach the Tower and rule over its seemingly infinite kingdoms.
White Boy Rick
Set in 1980's Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic and the aar on Drugs, McConaughey plays Richard Wershe Sr., an illegal arms dealer.
Serenity
Star-studded thriller Serenity casts the actor as a fishing boat captain whose mysterious past comes back to haunt him when his ex-wife, played by Anne Hathaway, tracks him down with a desperate plea for help.