ACADEMY Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey is considering entering American politics, but it is not untrodden ground as the Hollywood star would be the latest in a fairly long line to do so.

 

What’s he been in again?

McConaughey, who won the Oscar for his 2014 role as a real life AIDS patient in the 1980s in Dallas Buyers Club, is known for other movies such as The Lincoln Lawyer, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Wedding Planner and Sahara.

 

He’s still acting?

The 51-year-old voices a character in the animated movie Sing 2 later this year and his most recent film was 2019's The Gentlemen, directed by Guy Ritchie and co-starring Hugh Grant.

 

And he’s a professor?

In 2019, Texan-born McConaughey officially became a “professor of practice” for the Department of Radio Television and Film at the Moody College of Communication in his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Now?

The father-of-three is said to be making calls to influential Texans to check the temperature of their response to him running for the role of governor of Texas. US political site Politico reported this week that he has reached out to "a deep-pocketed moderate Republican and energy CEO" to garner the lie of the land in the oil state.

 

He has been thinking about it for a while?

In March, he told CBS News in the United States: “I’m giving it consideration. I would be a fool not to. It's a very honourable thing to consider, you know, what that position would mean. What would it be for me, what would it mean for the people of Texas…I have to decide for me what is my category where I can be most useful in life from here?"

 

It’s well-trodden ground?

Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood star in the 1930s and 1940s, with his most famous movie the Kings Row in 1942. He went on to become the governor of California from 1967 to 1975, before becoming the 40th US President, serving two terms from 1981 to 1989.

 

Schwarzenegger?

Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, now 73 and the star of the Terminator franchise, was the governor of California from 2003 to 2011, before returning to movie-making.

 

In the UK?

English actress Glenda Jackson - who has twice won the Academy Award for best actress, in 1971 and 1973 - was a Labour MP from 1992 to 2015, before returning to her original passion, earning a Tony Award for her role in the play Three Tall Women in 2018 at the age of 82.

 

Anyone else spring to mind?

Clint Eastwood was the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in California in the mid-1980s, while Sonny Bono - who came to fame performing with his second wife Cher, with the pair releasing the iconic hit record I Got You Babe - was mayor of Palm Springs in California in the late 1980s.