Was True Detective Matthew McConaughey’s career defining performance?

By Josh Hill | Oct 9, 2014

With the new season of True Detective coming soon, many fans are looking back on the first season with a ton of fondness, trying to figure out just why it’s so amazing. One of the obvious highlights was Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Rust Cohle, but many fans are torn between which of the actor’s roles were more crucially important to his career revival.

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It’s easy to say that true Detective is what revived McConaughey’s career but let’s remember that he also had a stellar role in Dallas Buyers Club that he won an Oscar for. There was no Emmy win for True Detective, which there is a reason for but still counts against True Detective in this discussion.

But when it comes down to it, many critics believe that the reasons McConaughey won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club was thanks to the hype of True Detective at the time. Both forces were working in the actor’s favor as True Detective is one of his finest roles, but his work on Dallas Buyers Club shouldn’t be busted down.

At the end of the day though, even with the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, the best role of McConughey’s career so far has been True Detective. To be fair though — and not to destroy this entire argument — but the five minutes that McConaughey is in Wolf of Wall Steet is better than almost everything he had done leading up to it, so take that into account as well.

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