Whether he’s floating down the Amazon River, back­packing across Africa, or mountain biking, hiking, and surfing in Costa Rica, adventure is at the top of Matthew McConaughey’s list of priorities. The ruggedly handsome actor — he was voted the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine in 2005 and won The People’s Choice Award for Favorite Male Action Star in 2006 — credits his mother, Mary Kathlene “Kay” McCabe, with inspiring his love of travel early on. As a substitute teacher in his kindergarten class, she urged the students not to be satisfied with just reading about the world but to see it, explore it, and experience it first hand. Matthew took her words to heart.
Born in Uvalde, Texas, in 1969, McConaughey moved with his family to the small East Texas town of Longview in 1980 when the oil business was booming and his father, James Donald McConaughey [who died in 1992], was selling pipeline equipment. Previously James had run a Texaco gas station, worked as a truck driver, and played professional football for the Green Bay Packers. Adventure for Matthew and his older brothers, Pat and Michael “Rooster,” included country summers with what he describes as “no shoes, no shirts ... frog gigging, nobody on two legs for miles for days on end, woods, pools, streams, lakes. It’s where I made my connection with nature and developed my deep love of nature.”

McConaughey discovered he was a pretty good football player, the kid that nobody could tackle — “not because of talent but because of hustle,” he says. “I was pretty good at tennis, too, until I broke my foot.” After making good grades and being voted “most handsome” in his senior class, he graduated from high school in 1988 and found a way, through Rotary Youth Exchange, to go off on his first big adventure: Australia. He chose Australia “because it was the wild, with about the same population of Texas, but primarily I went because I thought it was wild.” He had to sign a contract to stay one year, during which time he worked odd jobs, washing dishes in restaurants and shoveling chicken manure.

Back in the States, he began pre-law studies at the University of Texas. Then, just three hours before the final exam of his sophomore year, McConaughey’s life changed completely.

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