6 Performances That Prove Matthew McConaughey Is The Best Actor Of This Year… And Last

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While we wait for Matthew McConaughey‘s performance in The Wolf of Wall Street to make its debut on Christmas Day, it’s easy to see that the 44-year-old actor is at the top of his game from everything else he’s been in recently. Rarely has an actor had a streak of undeniably brilliant performances like McConaughey has in the last two years. And as Oscar approaches, we have to wonder, why is McConaughey not considered a top contender in any acting category, lead or supporting, especially after being so blatantly snubbed last year.

Well regardless of what the Academy and the other awards bodies think, here are six absolutely brilliant performances from Mr. McConaughey that should resoundingly prove he’s the best actor of this year… and last:

1. Mud (2013)

In Mud, McConaughey gives what is arguably the best performance in his entire career as the fugitive who befriends two young boys when they discover him on an island in the Mississippi River. He takes what could have been a rather simple coming-of-age drama and gives it a fantastical and romantic sensibility, owning pretty much ever moment of every scene he’s in. His is a love story, and McConaughey shows his character’s wounds here. That he was snubbed at the Spirit Awards for his supporting performance in this amazing indie is an embarrassment.

2. Killer Joe (2012)

While Mud is a much more mainstream choice, McConaughey’s turn as a sadistic hitman in Killer Joe may in reality be the best work the actor has ever done. It’s a showy role when Joe is at his most vicious and a quiet one when he’s at his most focused. Throughout, we see glimpses of a McConaughey we’ve never seen before—and probably won’t again. And the way he delivers the line “Do you want me to wear your face?” is both darkly comic and menacing, a difficult combination to be sure. He was never going to get an Oscar for this movie, but part of me knows that if he ever receives one, his performance here will be one of the reasons why.

3. Magic Mike (2013)

Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike certainly wasn’t the movie it was marketed to be. Sure we get to see McConaughey’s legendary abs in all their glory as the owner and emcee of a male strip club, but it’s McConaughey’s darker moments as a ruthless business man that really take the role from flashy to substantive. Florida’s sex industry, we learn, is the perfect backdrop for a film about America’s broken economy. And with McConaughey as the man with the money, we get to see just how brutal business can be in the middle of the housing crisis.

4. Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

In Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey plays a rodeo hustler who becomes a supplier of unregulated AIDS meds after he learns he’s contracted HIV. While his co-star Jared Leto surprisingly manages to upstage McConaughey in the film, the actor’s dedication, losing nearly 50 lbs. for the role, proves that he’s not just a set of abs. And while the role doesn’t have the flash or depth to compete with many other recent performance, McConaughey feels like he was made for this role from the first time we see him on screen. Texas forever.

5. Bernie (2012)

Speaking of Texas, McConaughey’s performance as the east Texas district attorney in Richard Linklater’s minor masterpiece Bernie shows that McConaughey, whose personality lends itself to larger than life characters, can do restraint as well as he can do flash. Sure the DA has some moments where he plays to the press, but mostly we McConaughey slows things down to make the part work. While Jack Black was born to play the role of the small town funeral director turned murderer, the DA role isn’t something we’d expect to see McConaughey in. But that’s what makes his success here so brilliant.

6. The Paperboy (2012)

Not many people saw Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy and those who did paid more attention to Nicole Kidman’s superb performance than they did McConaughey’s. But this pulpy, high-end trash-terpiece gives McConaughey a chance to show he can do down and dirty with the best of them. McConaughey lays it all on the line for a brutal rape scene that outs his character as a gay man in rural Florida in 1969. It’s a pivotal moment in the film, not just for the character but also for his brother (played by Zac Efron).  I wouldn’t call it brave as some might, this hopelessly hetero actor going gay, except for the fact that everyone who is in this film had the courage to just be in it. It’s a grimy little goodie, but McConaughey still shines.