Matthew McConaughey on Physically Transforming for Dallas Buyers Club

You know, I had a story about, I had a teaching tool that had to do with something I pulled off in Hollywood for my kids. And I'm big on delayed gratification. And you know, after I won the Oscar for Best Actor, my kids were like, well, what'd you get the trophy for? And I said, well, you remember a year and a half ago, we were in New Orleans, Popeye I would go away, you wake up in the morning, I was already at work, and I'd come home and have dinner with you and tuck you in. And you wake up next morning, I was gone again. And remember you said I look like a giraffe because I was so skinny. And like, yeah. And I go, well, what I was doing for those 30 days, when I was gone all day, a year and a half later, somebody said, deemed that excellent work. And they gave me a trophy for that work. What I did a year and a half ago. And I remember I saw him click. They were like, oh, oh, our future is a compounding interest. You know what I mean? We can ask, oh, you can build, you can do something today and get rewarded tomorrow. And it was an example that worked for them of understanding that you can invest and make choices to engineer more ROI. I know that was a milestone for you. And obviously you won the Oscar for it, but there's something about these physical transformation roles when an actor does something where you realize like they're literally torturing themselves. I mean, how did you get down to, how much did you weigh? I weighed 135. And look, you know this, I was not torturing myself. I was militant. The hardest part was making the damn choice. It was my responsibility. If I looked like I do now playing Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, you are out of the movie, the first frame, oh, bullshit. He doesn't, he's not staged for HIV. I'm out. What's my job? I had to lose the weight. Once I made my mind up, I did the smart thing. I gave myself five months. I got on a diet where I'd have my tapioca pudding or whatever, three eggs and egg whites in the morning, five ounce of fish, a cup of vegetables for lunch, five ounce of fish, a cup of vegetables for dinner, as much wine as I wanted to drink. And I lost 2.5 pounds a week, like clockwork, no exercise. As much wine as you wanted to drink? Much as a one. How does it, what kind of diet is this? It worked 2.5 pounds. And it didn't matter if I was going to the treadmill and burning 2000 calories a day or not, 2.5 pounds a week, clockwork. And what happened during that time, this is another reason that I really didn't torture myself. And people say, oh my gosh, it's been so hard. I was like, no, what did I learn from it that the body is more resilient than we give it credit for? I, the power I lost from the neck down equally or more so sublimated to the neck up. I was so, my mental game was so acute and so on point. I was clinically smart. It didn't matter if I drank my wine until one in the morning at 4.30 a.m. No alarm clock. Bang. I was up every morning. Had incredible amount of mental energy. I had no leverage from my neck down. I mean, my knees. I had no insulation anywhere. You know, my body would hurt when I try to run 10 feet. But from here up, there's some things I actually miss about it. What do you think? What was the process? Like, why did your brain work better when you were starving yourself? I think because it wasn't relying on it. I think on a cellular level, I felt my body going, hey, to use a baseball term, you got people over there on the bench in the dugout, then you got people out in the field that are, you know, sitting in the in the bullpen, not working out on a cellular level. Cellularly, my cells and they were in the dugout and over there in the bullpen had to get up and go, whoa, we're not getting fed. What we used to get fed. We got a we got exercise here. We got to come to putt hut because the body is not getting. We're not getting what we used to get. We're not placated by what we used to get. Our insulation's gone. Our what we relying on is gone. What we used to rely on is gone. So I think my whole body woke up and my brain got really super, super sharp on that as well. So I think it was the going without the there's a bit of a it was what I went without that sharpened up and made my brain on the cellular level much more hungry. What do you weigh normally? 188. Jesus Christ. So you lost 50 pounds. Yeah. There's roles where guys do this where it defines their career in some way. Robert De Niro when he gained weight for Raging Bull, Christian Bale when he did The Machinist. Yeah. Yeah. There's these these roles where a guy or a woman just transform Charlize Theron when she played monster. They they transform their body. And it's like it's a different level of commitment. And when you entered into that film, it was just the first time you'd ever had to do that. Yeah. First time ever. I do. I mean, you got Jack for that. Well, I don't know how Jack do you wear before for that dragon movie? I'm sorry. I forget the name. Rain of Fire. Rain of Fire. I fucking love that movie. I was a great baby. Van Zandt God Miss Van Zandt was a great movie. Talk about a guy who was about no bullshit. Well, that was a sobering character. I miss that guy. Yeah, it was a fun character. But you were Jack in that movie. We Jack normally. Did you have to get Jack for that movie? I got more Jack for that. Look, our family, my dad, we come from our anatomy and the McConaughey's have big tricep. My dad, you see, you'll love this. I'd be sitting there as a kid. And my dad was a big guy. 6'4, 265. You know, he played Kentucky under Bear Bryant. Got drafted by the Green Bay Packers. He was a big bear of a man. And he comes into the living room one night and I'm in front of the TV watching my favorite show, Incredible Hulk. There's Luke Rick. And I'm like standing in front of the TV doing all this. He goes, boy, what you doing? I was like, dad, look at him, man. I mean, he's got these baseball sized biceps. Look at him. Wow. And he goes, uh-huh. He takes off his shirt. He goes, let me tell you something, son. He goes that right there. He pulled the bus. If he goes, that's nice. Makes the girls scream, you know, it's for show. He goes that right there. He goes, that's the work muscle. That's the one that puts the roof over our head. That's for dough. Show and dough, the triceps for dough. So I had big triceps. So when I went and worked out and if I take a little bit of creatine, my triceps go bananas. So that was a minor transformation. It wasn't that difficult to do. No, it was, it was, it was minor. There's a lot of, a lot of boxing and, uh, um, and, and, and, and just some nice, you know, throwing some weight around. You just got fit. But for Dallas Buyers Club. Yeah. I always try to stay within 10 pounds of striking weight of whatever I need to do for the role. What was it hard to make the decision to do that for Dallas Buyers Club though? Because that was a giant transformation. I mean, it wasn't hard. I was looking for something to be all consumed with something to be obsessed with a singular obsession. Go, this is my job. So my life revolved around that. My wife made me meals. Trust me. I didn't go to pizza hut and say, no, thank you. The pizza, I'll have a salad. I did not even put myself in front of the temptations. I, I was a hermit. I stayed in my, my wife made me the meals and I studied and wrote and created the character all day long and I'd never got tired of that. So my world, I was in a bubble. I just put myself in a bubble for, for five and a half months. And that commitment to put myself on that Island to know that this is, it's good to have the singular obsession. You, you cannot go far enough. McConaughey. That was, there's a freedom in that. There's a freedom I've always found it being having, having a character that I can commit that much to. You cannot go far enough. That was your thought process. Yeah. I knew when I got down to 135, I was like, ho, okay, that's good. And mind you, I will tell you this. When I started to eat more at 135 to say, let's slow this train down and quit losing weight, my body had already got the message and had its blinders on that we're going South and it kept going South. So that was a bit scary because I kept losing the weight because my body had gotten that had already gotten in the, in the rhythm of losing weight. And like I said, it turned a blind eye on getting any more food. So there was a tough transition there for about two weeks to get my weight to balance out again and say, let's just hold at 135. So you dropped below 135 at one point in time. Just went below with 135, got down about 132 and then brought it back up. Now, how long did it take for you to physically recover from something like that? Were you back to normal? And I'm still recovering. Really? Cause I thought that, I thought that when I saw you in that film, I told my wife, I remember saying this, like, this is going to take a long time for him to bounce back because I know how hard it is for guys to cut weight for fights. And I know, I know a lot of guys that have really depleted their body doing that. And when I saw you that gone and skinny, I was like, he's eating his body. Your body ate itself. I mean, it was eating itself. It's the only way. Yeah. I look, I came back and I did true detective after that and I got on true detective, I got to about one 67 and held and I loved that weight as well. Cause I had a little more leverage, I had a little more athletic ability, I had a little more insulation around my joints, but I was still pretty stripped and ripped. Um, slowly coming back from that. I did learn this. I had to come back very slowly because I had heard stories about people that go, well now I'm back now I'm going to gain weight. I can eat as much as I want. And that you can, you can grow back and look deformed. You can, your features can come back. If you rush it, they can come back in odd ways. So I very slowly put the weight back on. I then did a role a few years ago. I guess it was about four, three, three years after, uh, where I put on 47 pounds. So I was two 20. What was that? Which is a lot more gold. It's called gold. It's a hell of a lot more fun to put that weight on than to take it off where I was just cheeseburger King. Um, and my family loved me in that role cause I was captain fun. I was yes to everything. Milkshake for breakfast. You got it. Let's go. Now that was, I've never talked about at that time, I was still mentally sharp, not as sharp as I was when I was down at one 35. But at two 20 libido was through the roof. I couldn't get, I couldn't catch a cold. If I swim in the damn canals of Amsterdam, man, I was like the abominable snowman. I was insulated, um, and had great energy, um, during that time. Now coming back from that, I still got a couple of things on my back here around the waist. I'm like, where'd that come by that? That came up with that rolling gold. And what's that still doing? Hanging around. Um, you know, so I did have to come back slowly. Um, but I will say this, you know, one 88 since then, that's my fighting weight before I look a little different than the one 88 before then before Dallas fires club, it's a different one 88. So it did take a physical toll. Sure. I would say, you know, even, you know, neck and things like that, you know, neck and, and, and, you know, bone structures the same, but where, and how much of this is just getting older too and having less fat sales. I'm not sure. Um, but yeah, it, it, it didn't hurt. Like I said, I think I stretched my body. I noticed when, you know, when I got down to that weight at one 35, if I were, you know, tried to sprint 10, 10 yards and I just, my knees would buckle. I had no insulation and these hurt. Yeah. I watched it again recently just to kind of get it into my head. And that's what I was thinking. Like, this is going to take a while to bounce back from, like I almost forgot how gaunt you got. And it was, it was striking. 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