article_snippet: Tall, tanned and often bare-chested, the six-foot-tall movie star from Texas, Matthew McConaughey, was just another beefcake actor starring in vacuous romantic and coming-of-age comedies that kept the money flowing in.
article_snippet: While he wasn't one of the finest actors working in American cinema he had a certain humble charm, obvious good looks and an everyday Texan attitude about he that helped propel he into the lower ranks of the A-list of Hollywood stars', he writes.
article_snippet: The humble kid from Texas whose first job was raking 77 sand traps on a golf course before 8 a.m., got lucky on those rom-coms and was living a carefree lifestyle.
article_snippet: This was the man who grew up in a small town, Uvalde, Texas, his father 'a pretty carny salesman' who had invested in a diamond mine in Ecuador that turned out to be phony, and his mother a kindergarten teacher.
article_snippet: Now the 'man with the brilliant smile and the golden torso – an easygoing sport who, temperamentally, never seemed more than fifty yards from the beach – has become one of the most inventive actors in movies', writes David Denby in the New Yorker.