Born in Texas to a gas station owner and substitute schoolteacher, Matthew McConaughey was the youngest of three boys. When he finished school, he decided his father's business wasn't interesting enough, and left for Australia instead.
In the one year he spent down under, he did everything from washing dishes to shovelling chicken manure.
He returned to America with the intention of being a lawyer, but dropped out before a final exam after reading a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World.
It made him realise that law wasn't what he wanted to spend his life doing. Cinema was.