Matthew McConaughey spent his whole life thinking he’d been crowned Little Mister Texas — but it turns out that wasn’t quite true.
The Interstellar star’s mum convinced Matthew he’d placed first in the pageant, and he only learned the truth two decades later.
He told Kelly Clarkson: ‘I was eight years old, go to Bandera, Texas, you know, get up on the horse, answer a few questions about mama and everything else, and the 4-H club, etcetera, and I won a trophy.
‘That’s all I remember, is I won a trophy.’
In 2018, Matthew was going through an old file of photographs when he came across a picture from the 1977 competition and made a shocking discovery.
‘I was like, “Look at me, Little Mister Texas.” And then something caught my eye.
‘I looked on the nameplate that was engraved…and I zoomed in on it, and it said “runner up!”
‘So I questioned, I go, “Would I even be sitting here right now, with the life I have, if I was raised thinking I was the runner up?”’
We think he’d have probably turned out alright, alright, alright either way.
Matthew went on to describe how his mum brushed off the snub, telling him the kid who won was rich and wore a nicer suit.
In what appears to be Matthew’s entry to the competition, shared by a Redditor, the future film star lists his hobby as ‘play[ing] cowboys’, says his favourite game is American football, and identifies his favourite foods as hot dogs and meat.
Matthew, who just dropped his memoir, Greenlights, later proved his doubters wrong, winning ‘Most Handsome’ in his high school yearbook.
But the star, who shot to fame in the 2000s with films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and The Wedding Planner, was determined to be more than just a pretty face.
So he turned down a $14.5m (around £11m) rom-com for meatier roles in True Detective and Dallas Buyer’s Club, for which he won an Oscar in 2014.
A bit more prestigious an accolade than Little Mister Texas.
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