Matthew McConaughey went balls to the wall in a competition with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show on Thursday's episode.
The Oscar-winning actor and host played an old show favorite, the "Facebreakers" game, in which players throw footballs at a grid of glass panels, each featuring an image of one of them. The episode aired a day before the release of McConaughey's latest movie, Christopher Nolan's big budget sci-fi film, Interstellar.
The Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective star was rather over-dressed for the occasion but nonetheless looked dapper in his gray three-piece suit (although he left the tie at home), which could have marked an homage to a childhood memory (and LIE!) that he later talked about on the show.
He got to throw first but joked that Fallon had "home field advantage." The actor showcased some impressive throwing skills, despite some good-natured heckling from Fallon, and really got into the game, even jokingly getting in the host's face at one point.
Fallon, who scored plenty of points himself, jumped up and down and cheered as he made his final shot. McConaughey extended his hand to him, after which the host was seen hugging the actor and saying, "Happy birthday!" McConaughey turned 45 on Tuesday.
And, of course, every good sports victory deserves a refreshing reward.
"Cheers, now!" McConaughey said.
On past episodes of The Tonight Show, Fallon played "Facebreakers" (sometimes styled "Face Breakers") with Tom Cruise (watch video) and champion golfers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy (watch video). In January, just before the season 1 premiere of True Detective, Fallon and McConaughey had also played another Tonight Show game, "Flip Cup," along with supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
On Thursday's episode of The Tonight Show, McConaughey also talked about a crushing revelation regarding his childhood: His mother had led him to believe for years that he had won the 1977 Little Mr. Texas competition when he was a boy. He discovered one day that it had all been a lie.
"Runner-up," he said on his WhoSay page last month on a Throwback Thursday, alongside a photo of his proud 8-year-old self wearing a cowboy hat and holding a trophy.
"Alright, this is 1977, I'm 8 years old," he told Fallon. "Little Mr. Texas, Bandera, Texas. You get on a horse, you ride around, you talk about what it means to be a cowboy...six years ago, I get this picture and I decide I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna blow it up on my computer."
"I've been telling people I'm Little Mr. Texas," he said. "That's what I'm told, my mother told me I'm Little Mr. Texas, there's proof. Six years ago, at whatever, 39 years old, I say, 'Let me just zoom in on this picture.' I look at the trophy and it says, 'Runner-up, Little Mr. Texas.'"
He then called his mom for an explanation.
"She said, 'Nah, the kid who won had a lot more money than us. He bought like a three-piece suit. Nah, we call that cheating. You're Little Mr. Texas."
McConaughey also said his mother also helped him with a poem submission for a poetry contest in school...in a way that would make English teachers cringe. Let's just say he's lucky the Internet didn't exist back then.
"And I won!" he said.