American actor Matthew McConaughey may be enjoying a renaissance of sorts in his professional career; while he is best known for his trademark phrase "All right, all right, all right," he is also quite open about his Christian faith.
McConaughey, who is currently starring in Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar, has routinely thanked God in whatever he does in the world of acting, most recently when he won an Oscar for playing an HIV-positive man desperately searching for medical treatment in Dallas Buyers Club. In an article by Brett Martin of GQ Magazine published this month, McConaughey was asked about the tenets of his faith.
"It's non-denominational," McConaughey said. "It's based in the faith that Jesus is the son of God, that he died for our sins, but many different denominations come in."
McConaughey added that as a father of three children, going to church was "important to my childhood." He noted how much he needed God in his life and family too.
"Even if it was just for the ritual of giving an hour and a half on Sunday to yourself, to pray and to think about others, even if you're tired or whatever," he said. "It's a time for me to take inventory of my last week, to look at what's in the future and say my thank-yous and think about what I can work on to do better."
McConaughey later said that he needed "somebody who can help answer my questions," adding that he believes life "is a miracle" from God.
When Martin confronted the actor on why he decided to marry Brazilian model Camila Alves back in 2012 despite the fact he already had three children with her, McConaughey said that he really wanted to go through with it in the end.
"I didn't want it to be a destination; the fun is that we're on the adventure together," he said. "So I spent a lot of time with her. We talked about it spiritually. We did a lot of reading and talked to a lot of people that had been divorced, a lot of people that had been happily married. We talked to our pastor."
McConaughey later noted that he and Alves came to an understanding that they should "make a covenant" between them and God and see marriage as "the beginning of an adventure we're taking together."
"Once that clicked with me and I didn't have to intellectualize my way into it, I started to feel the excitement," he said. "I was having my own definition of the freedom I wanted thrown right back at me, in possibly a much greater way."
According to a March 2014 article from Jim Denison of Christian Post, Matthew David McConaughey was born in 1969 in a small South Texas town to Methodist parents and graduated with a media degree from the University of Texas. He married his wife, who has a Catholic background, back in 2012 in a private Catholic ceremony.
McConaughey first garnered both attention and derision for mentioning his Christian faith after winning the Oscar for Best Actor at the Academy Awards in a short statement in his acceptance speech, which is available on YouTube.
"First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities which I know are not of my hand or any other human kind," he said at the Oscars earlier this year. "He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God you got a friend and that friend is you.'"
