Co-ordinates in space and time: that is a new phrase actor Matthew McConaughey has just picked up from his Contact producer, Ann Druyan, and he obviously likes the way it rolls off his tongue.
'I think that's a great phrase. You can say that about anything or anybody you see . . . if you hadn't caught that red light or the green light. How many coincidences have happened? How many places have you wandered where you walked into someone strange? [It's] co-ordinates in space and time,' he drawls in his heavy Texan accent.
'I don't think anything of that is accidental; but I don't think there is one great plan for it.' McConaughey, who passed through the SAR on a promotional visit recently, should know about things like this. After all, a 'co-ordinate in space and time' may just be the only reason the hunk is one of Hollywood's rising stars instead of one of thousands of production assistants running round film sets.
The actor's space and time co-ordinated perfectly with that of Hollywood casting director, Don Phillips, in a hotel bar in Austin, Texas, one night in 1992. McConaughey, still a film student at the University of Texas, was thinking of moving to Los Angeles to be a production assistant.
The bartender pointed out the casting director to the student and mentioned 'he is in movies'. After battling with initial shyness, McConaughey went up to introduce himself. Before the night was over, Phillips - who had put names such as Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Forest Whitaker on the road to Hollywood - had offered McConaughey a role in the small but respectable Dazed And Confused. 'Who knows if there was intervention by a higher being? All I know is I didn't want to go out that night. My girlfriend wanted to go; usually I'm the one who wants to go out,' he laughs.
'I did have second thoughts about going over and introducing myself. And that bartender didn't work every night and he happened to be there.
