“So is it time to take McConaughey seriously as an actor? This is the same guy who was found playing the bongos naked in his home in 1999 and was subsequently arrested and charged with possession of marijuana…” —Dustin Levy

“All right, all right, all right.”

Upon winning his first Golden Globe in January for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey uttered these words, recalling his breakout role in the 1993 stoner comedy Dazed and Confused.

McConaughey’s reference highlights the peculiarity of his career in Hollywood: His roles over the past 20 years have been lauded as well as mocked, and now he is nominated for his first Academy Award — for best lead actor — alongside the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale. The nomination is the culmination of McConaughey’s recent choosiness in selecting films, which is forcing audiences to reconsider how to regard him as an actor.

In 2008, McConaughey reportedly turned down $15 million for the starring role in a Magnum, P.I. movie, disappointing all fans who wanted to see him rock a Tom Selleck mustache, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Coming after a string of abysmal romantic comedies, including Failure to Launch, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Fool’s Gold, this curious decision pushed McConaughey into his current career trajectory. Six of his past seven films rated on Rotten Tomatoes, including Mud, Bernie and Magic Mike, have been “certified fresh,”and his performances in those films have been met with critical approval.

The decision was a deliberate one on McConaughey’s part. The 44-year-old took a year and a half off from acting because he was bored with the roles he was getting and was starting a family. Since 2008, McConaughey had three children with Brazilian model Camila Alves and married her in 2012, according to US Weekly.

“[McConaughey] had an illustrious career, and he made a very conscious decision to go in a different direction and turn the ship,” said Robbie Brenner, Dallas Buyers Club producer, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “When you become a parent, when you have more life experience, you want to put an indelible mark on the world. That is ultimately what Matthew is doing. He’s choosing great directors to work with and creating an amazing filmography for himself.”

McConaughey received the most praise of his career for his Oscar-nominated performance in Dallas Buyers Club, portraying the real-life story of Ron Woodroof, a homophobic AIDS patient who created a buyers club in the ’80s to import drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. McConaughey and his costar Jared Leto lost more than 30 pounds for their respective roles in the film. Leto also received an Oscar nomination for his performance as Rayon, a transgender AIDS patient and Woodroof’s eventual co-conspirator in the buyers club.

Many critics praised Leto for disappearing into his role, but McConaughey was equally successful in doing the opposite. Woodroof is a character who is difficult to root for because of his homophobia and brashness, but McConaughey’s Texas charm fits perfectly into his raw performance.

Dallas Buyers Club, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, was shot in 25 days for less than $5 million. McConaughey’s up-front fee was less than $200,000, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“I wasn’t sure about Matthew at first,” Vallée told The Hollywood Reporter. “Mr. The Most Handsome Man With Muscles? Then I met him and found a man who really wanted to change perceptions and have new challenges in his career.”

Dallas Buyers Club is nominated for best picture this year along with The Wolf of Wall Street, in which McConaughey makes a brief, scene-stealing appearance as Mark Hanna, an experienced New York stockbroker. 

He is bringing his talents to the small screen as well in HBO’s True Detective. McConaughey, who has also produced the show, stars as an eccentric Louisiana detective, in a role that is earning even more critical acclaim. The show debuted in January to 2.3 million viewers, making it the biggest HBO series premiere since Boardwalk Empire in 2010, according to Entertainment Weekly.

So is it time to take McConaughey seriously as an actor? This is the same guy who was found playing the bongos naked in his home in 1999 and was subsequently arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, according to The Smoking Gun. Fifteen years later, McConaughey has settled down, but his free-spirited, offbeat personality has not changed, perhaps best exemplified in his speeches throughout this awards season.

“It feels like they could put a blindfold on you and put you in a spaceship and take you to Neptune and you could hop off on the planet and they better have the sprockets rolling because you are going to behave as your man.” McConaughey said, discussing the thrill of acting in his Screen Actors Guild acceptance speech for best lead actor. “That is a glorious feeling.”

McConaughey is looking like a front-runner in the best lead actor race, but whether his is victorious on Oscar night is insignificant; by actively pursuing meaty and unique roles in film, the actor has redefined his career, all but guaranteeing his first Oscar nomination will not be his last. Sound all right, all right, all right to you?