It's a far cry from the used-car salesman buttonholing potential buyers on the forecourt. The Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey has signed a multi-year deal to appear in television and digital advertisements for the Lincoln Motor Company, making him the latest in a string of Hollywood stars to lend their name to a car brand.
Lincoln says the first ads featuring the 44-year-old actor behind the wheel of its new sports utility vehicle, the MKC, will appear next month. In a promotional video previewing the ads, McConaughey said Lincoln, a subsidiary of Ford, is "a classic, iconic American brand ... I like the history, I like that it's American-made."
He also said: "It was clear from the start that Lincoln appreciated me as an individual and that I would be able to be myself in this collaboration."
McConaughey and Lincoln have been co-stars before. The Texas-born actor won an Oscar earlier this year for his portrayal of the early Aids patient and activist Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club, but his recent career renaissance is often said to have stemmed from his 2011 film, The Lincoln Lawyer, in which he played a semi-scrupulous lawyer who worked from the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car. The first of McConaughey's Lincoln ads has been shot in his native Austin by the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who won the best director award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for his art-house thriller Drive, starring Ryan Gosling.
