Matthew McConaughey still isn’t tired of hearing his most iconic line

On the Kelce brothers ’ New Heights podcast, Matthew McConaughey said he’ll never tire of strangers greeting him with the same three words — and then walked through exactly how those words landed him on the map. The actor traced it back to an Austin night in 1992, when he met producer Don Phillips at a bar, a chance encounter that led to the Dazed and Confused script and, eventually, his breakout as David Wooderson.

Once he got to set, McConaughey said he was asked to improvise as Wooderson by locking onto the character’s simple obsessions. He boiled it down to three things:

• the car
• getting high
• rock and roll

From that headspace came the line that stuck — and his very first on-camera words.

“All right, all right, all right. First three words I ever said. First three words I ever said on film. What I thought might be a hobby turned out to be a career,” he said.

Decades later, he told Jason and Travis Kelce he hears the catchphrase constantly and doesn’t mind it one bit. The line, he added, still feels connected to the moment he found his footing as an actor.

Back to Rust Cohle?

Asked by Esquire which past project he’d revisit, McConaughey didn’t hesitate: True Detective. “I think if we got it right, it would be fun to go back to Rustin and Marty, True Detective,” he said — even punctuating the thought with Rust Cohle’s unmistakable whistle.

The idea isn’t out of nowhere. Creator Nic Pizzolatto has previously said he had another story in mind for Cohle and Hart, and both McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have been part of conversations about a potential reunion.

For now, the longtime friends are back on screen together in Brothers, which premiered on Apple TV+ on September 23, 2026 .