Matthew McConaughey on Sahara

Matthew McConaughey enthuses when describing Dirk Pitt, a character equal parts adventurer, sophisticated Don Juan, and man with a plan. “Sometimes he’s a scientist, sometimes he’s an inventor, sometimes he’s an adventurer,” he says. “He’s a guy who’s got plans, but those plans are always changing; he’s ready for the unexpected. He’s a great adapter. He’s been a Navy SEAL, but he’s also part pirate. He’s definitely a lover before a fighter, but if he’s got to fight, he handles his own.” McConaughey believes that this mix of characteristics make up the perfect action hero for our times. “Even though Dirk comes from a privileged background – he’s the son of a senator – he’s got his own idea about how to spend his life, which is to chase his treasures,” he says. “He chases the unknown – he says we can know the unknown. You can call him a dreamer, and I guess he is, but he’s also got the history, the training, and the scientific facts to back it up.” In the film, that means tracking down a Civil War Ironclad battleship in the middle of the African desert. “The fun of Dirk Pitt is that while he always has a plan, he also plans on the plan never going as he planned it,” McConaughey laughs. “Dirk Pitt is the luckiest man alive.” “Dirk’s an action hero, but in a way that we haven’t seen in a lot of movies,” says Breck Eisner. “Dirk’s a regular guy. He’s highly trained, of course, but when he gets into a scrape, he loves to wing it. He’s always thinking eight steps ahead and sometimes can forget about what’s happening at the moment. He’s been on every kind of adventure you can imagine, and that ability to wing it is what gets him through it.”You can read more on the film and access new clips via our database.