'Losing three stone for Dallas Buyers Club made me smarter', insists Matthew McConaughey

By DANIELLE GUSMAROLI

Published: 04:33 EDT, 18 February 2014 | Updated: 06:09 EDT, 18 February 2014

He's won critical acclaim for his role as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club - a part for which he lost more than three stone in weight.

And now Matthew McConaughey has revealed that shedding the pounds for the Oscar-nominated film actually made him feel smarter.

The Texas-born actor, who survived on an eating plan of Diet Coke, egg whites and a piece of chicken a day to slim down to a tiny 9.5 stone, admitted in an interview with this week's Radio Times that losing the weight forced him to find new ways to entertain himself - rather than just going out for dinner. 

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'Losing weight made me smarter': Matthew McConaughey has admitted that shedding the pounds for Dallas Buyers Club forced him to do more interesting things than just going out for dinner

Matthew, 43, said: 'I had to relearn how to entertain myself, because I wasn’t going outside, I wasn’t going to dinner, I wasn’t going to social places.

'I was writing so much more, reading so much more. It ended up being this really fun adventure, internally.'

But his dramatic weight didn't come without side effects, as Matthew admitted: 'As soon as I hit 143lb [10 stone 3lb], I started losing my eyesight.'

Tanned and healthy: Matthew McConaughey with wife Camila Alves at the UK premiere of Dallas Buyers Club earlier this year

 

The 6ft tall actor then looked into the condition and found the same had happened to the IRA hunger strikers in Northern Ireland 20 years ago.

He insists that losing weight was 'honestly not that difficult' but learning to re-progamme his life was the toughest challenge.

The full interview appears in this week's Radio Times magazine

He added: 'You have to reprogramme all of your habits, and the days get so long. You think it must be lunchtime already, and it’s only 9.30 in the morning,' he says.

'I kept a diary of my nutrition the whole way through, and it is something I will probably share at some point because it was quite the adventure.'

Revealing he locked himself away in his Texas mansion to avoid the sun and maintain his pale complexion, he put himself through a virtual winter.

'This guy needed to be pale, so I didn’t go outside in the sun for six months. In the summer, I gave myself a winter,' he said.   

And as the weight dropped from his muscular 13st 1lb to a scrawny 9st 9lbs, so, too, did his strength.

'I would do five push-ups and be sore. I would run 30 feet and my legs would lock up.'

The star's seriousness has led to him to take on a rare small-screen role in a new intense HBO crime drama, True Detective, alongside close chum, Woody Harrelson, as the pair star as detectives searching for a possible serial killer in deepest Louisiana.

In it Matthew plays Rust Cohle, an intense, troubled cop, who’s lost his wife and daughter by working deep undercover, and is now given to depressing philosophical ramblings on life.

'I wouldn’t wish anyone else to be in his head. He’s a real island unto himself. I loved this guy’s mind. I fell in love with the words coming out of his mouth.'

True Detective is aired on Sky Atlantic, Saturday 9.00pm. The full interview appears in this week's Radio Times magazine, out now. 

All serious now: Matthew with pal Woody Harrelson in their new television series True Detective