ALL eyes – The Gazette’s included - are on actor Matthew McConaughey as he enters the room at London’s Claridges Hotel.

Having seen his new film Dallas Buyers Club, for which the athletic actor lost 47lbs, everyone present wants to see how he looks now that he has returned to a more normal weight.

And he does, thankfully, look to be in rude health. The 44 year-old Texan seems in great spirits, joking with his co-star Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto throughout - and it’s no surprise when you consider how he has spent the last few months.

For his role as Ron Woodruff, a man who contracted HIV in the early 1980s and refused to give in, inadvertently aiding medical progress as he bought and sold emerging medication on the black market, the father-of-three has won countless awards all over the world. 

He and Leto were triumphant in the two major acting categories at both the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild, and are now favourites to win at the forthcoming Academy Awards.   

McConaughey is up against Leonardo DiCaprio, his co-star in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, in the main acting category. 

Coming after the acclaim following his apparent alteration in the direction of his career – he has moved away from romantic comedies and action-adventure roles – the world, for now, is his oyster again.     

Q: Matthew, is it true that you had been aware of the script for Dallas Buyers Club for a long time before actually getting to make the film?

A: It had been around for over 15 years and I remember reading it and thinking, this works. It had a lot of heart. Here was this guy, this anarchist who found a way to live seven more years. It’s a wild wonderful ride that this guy takes. I just thought it was highly original and I knew what I had to do.
I said to my agent, ‘make sure I don’t lose it. Keep me attached’. I could tell I needed to put that stake in the sand and say, ‘we’re going to do it at this time’. Even when the financing fell through, we said, ‘no, we’re making it’.

Q: Jared, is it true that you also read it in the early days? 

A: A friend of mine said my buddy has this script – which makes you want to hang up the phone. It was rough and not ready to be made. I kinda let it go but 15 years later… It’s a testament to the filmmakers that they stuck with it. All that perseverance and time and energy got concentrated into the script and it’s all the better for it.

Q: Matthew, do you believe that you’ve been offered what amounts to a second chance with your career?

A: Not really. I’m still in the same book, it’s just a different chapter. I said I need to recalibrate what I do. I’m not going to boo hoo anything in my career. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t do what I had done. I had a year and a half where nothing came in and I became a fresh idea for people like William Friedkin and Steven Soderberg. Part of it was sitting in the shadows and letting the right film come to me.

Q: Jared, how do you balance being a rock star with an actor?

A: I like what Andy Warhol said, that labels are for cans, not for people. I think it’s more common for people to do lots of things now.

Q: Matthew, how did you cope with the rigours of filming even though you were so underweight?

A: The amount I lost from the neck down, I gained from the neck up. And that’s where Ron was coming from. In the filming, I had plenty of energy. I needed three hours less sleep a night. And we did it all in 25 days – we were in the bubble. There was no going back to the trailer or waiting for a set up. We were just in it.

I’m not worrying about people sympathizing with Ron but if he’s a real guy, they will empathise. Our hope was if we stick with that, the heart of the story is going to rise up.

The redemption that Ron has always needed to be subtle so the challenge we saw was that he did not have this third act turn, this revelation, this epiphany. He’s the same son of a bitch we see early on. It would be false if we made him a crusader. He didn’t have that, he wasn’t that person. We never wanted to tie it up and make it, ‘the moral of the story is….’

Q: Jared, how much help did you get from the transgender community when researching the role of Rayon?

A: An incredible amount of love and support. That’s where I started when I did my research. They were incredibly generous with their time. People were happy to pass down information, like what it’s like to try to tell your parents who you really are. I think people know that we had the right intentions and tried our very best.

Q: Is it true that you dressed up for your audition with director Jean-Marc Vallee?

A: I have done stranger, more interesting things - maybe. There was a Skype meeting set up. I know it was a test. He was feeling me out so I used it as an opportunity. I got some lipstick and put on a little jacket and a pink furry sweater. I think it’s the last time he saw me as me. I proceeded to flirt with him for the next 20 minutes and woke up the next day with the part. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Q: And is it true that you haven’t seen the finished film yet?

A: I did see a piece of the trailer the other day and I was like, what is that? It looks kinda interesting. I’ll watch it at some point. If I was directing a film and in the edit room and making editorial decisions, and I've done that, it's not so much a self-conscious thing but if I don't have any control over that process, it would probably be excruciating for me to just sit back, as a self-confessed control freak.

Q: Matthew, has playing the role affected you in any way?

A: I question authority more clearly and with a little more vigour now. I noticed I’d written my first two letters to senators. It reminded me that if you want to do something right, do it yourself, on a personal level. 

Admitting that sort of mortality was a personal shock for me. Why does it take that? I don’t know but it seems to be. Experiences which made me a man, my father was dying was one. It’s interesting, being faced with death.

Dallas Buyers Club is released in the UK on Friday, February 7.