I love some Matthew McConaughey, and I usually find him kind of fascinating, like he has this real joy for life and talks in parables. In the latest issue of Esquire, for which Matt is the cover boy, he comes across like a poser, though. He’s like one of those guys in college who thinks he’s the first dude to backpack around Europe and you just have to try it, or you haven’t lived. Only Europe is too good for Matty, he had to go to South American to challenge himself since they have modern conveniences in Europe. It became clear to me after reading a few paragraphs that this wasn’t the McConaughey I loved, though, it was some insecure journalist’s opinion of him.

In this Esquire story, McConaughey is so hospitable and accommodating. He invites the journalist to his spend a couple days with him, to go golfing, to attend a party at his house and to stay overnight on the property in one of his Airstream trailers. Only the journalist kind of sh*ts all over everything and comes across as insecure and out of his element. He portrays McConaughey as a caricature of himself and kind of mocks him. It’s hard to portray in a few segments, because it’s the overall tone of the piece.

Here are some excerpts, and I would encourage you to read the whole thing to get a better picture of what’s going on if you’re interested:

The journalist on McConaughey’s vernacular
Over the weekend he refers to six things as “nectar” — a steak, the wine, the company of his older dog, a hat he found for his two-year-old son, the arrival of his final set of friends, and that one golf shot. Broadly speaking, nectar is good.

McConaughey on his trip to Peru
When things are going right in a golf cart, familiarity builds. And so I ask him the question that is sometimes awkward: why he took time off from making movies. I’m inquiring about the previous two years, before this most recent comeback, but McConaughey goes straight to his own question. The last two years don’t seem to be any of my business.

“I’ve done that before,” he says. “I went to Peru after A Time to Kill. I had a lot to think about. Just grabbed a bag and left. And I went up and further in, until I was about as uncomfortable and unfamiliar with things as I could be. You know why I don’t go to Europe for these trips? Because in Europe everything pretty much works, or it almost works. I mean, it’s almost what I’m used to. But Peru, Mali, Morocco? Nothing works. Nothing. So you have to give up on what you know. At least I do. And for a while it’s very uncomfortable. Extremely. I mean you’re faking the language as best you can, nodding at things you probably shouldn’t be, and you start to miss the things you know. And you need to eat.”

For the first time since we met, the truths pile themselves, emblematic but also pragmatic, hard-earned or maybe stolen from the lyrics of a pop song. I can’t tell yet. But he persists. “And I started to strip things down. I took off my hat and my ring, just this big old gold ring. I’d made it, melted down one of my dad’s old rings and mixed in some gold from I don’t know — one of my mother’s teeth I think. And this ring — big old M on it — I took it off. One morning I get up — Count of Montezuma, the whole bit, threw up, diarrhea, puked. It was a purge, man” — this word he enunciates precise as a birdcall — “and it was sick, but it was a spiritual cleanse, and after that I was high as a kite. I was able to look at all the stuff I’d stripped away and ask questions: What does that ring mean? What does my name mean? What do I make of that old American flag that’s sewn onto the hat I’ve been wearing for eighteen years? All these things that give me pride, what did they add up to?”

He was standing over a putt then, or he’d walked up onto the apron of the green, or he’d reached down to pull his ball from the hole — some golf gesture. I don’t remember; I was listening. “It all comes into balance between day nine and day thirteen,” he said.

“What happens then?”

“That’s about the point where I start to see I can survive. And all my discomfort just disappears and then I pretty much feel free to go home. I try to let the place own me. Then I can go home.”

On his partner, Camila Alves, and their new home
“Before this, I had a super home in the Hollywood Hills that I did by myself — landscaping, detailing pretty much everything. But that house was mine. And yeah, we coulda gone in there right away. Camila would have said, Fine, don’t change a thing. But I thought, I found the woman I wanna do it with, the woman I wanna make a family with, hopefully live our life out together. She needs to have 50 percent of that. I mean, it’s a lot easier for me to be at 100 percent. I’d always been 100 percent. It’s braver for me at 50 percent.”

McConaughey calls himself religious
“A friend of mine who’s a lawyer said something about me a couple of weeks ago, and it’s true. You know how that is? When a friend you’ve known a long time declares something about you and wham!” Here Matthew McConaughey snaps his fingers so loud it sounds like the cracking of a Lincoln Log. “I mean, you think, Hey, that’s true!” His voice drops. “Good friend,” he says. He speaks in many directions at once. “He said to me, Matthew, you’re into commas. Every time you think you’ve stopped, you always come out of it. Every time you think you’ve reached the end of that long dead-end street, you slip around the edge, past that stopping point, past the right angles. And I thought: Yes.” This is a word he hisses, almost every time, stretching it right into an invitation. “It’s all continuation! Even if you’re dying, that’s a kind of continuation, because you move on. And you have to change. Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it…”

McConaughey takes that fifth bite of rib eye, then sighs. “Listen,” he says, “I was thinking. Earlier, when I was talking about the commas, and the continuation? You might be tempted to call that ‘spiritual.’ ” He tilts his head, as if weighing the word. “But I think that description would be a dodge. I’m religious. I like that word. You can use it.”

So he’s hunched, quartered toward me, speaking softly, cheek full of rib eye, and he pretty much whispers, “Yes, you can look at the table and say you see spirituality. Fine. Friendship, love, reverence for one another” — he’s darting his eyes in various directions, so I get eye-blink camera shots: heads thrown back in laughter, glasses clinking, women striking a harmony, children climbing into the laps of their fathers. “And I can shake hands with that. Spiritual. It’s perfectly good. But what I see here is ligare.”

“Ligare.” I repeat the word to be sure I got it. I was taught by Jesuits. We’re in for some Latin here.

“It’s the root word of religion. It’s the Latin. Ligare. ‘To bind.’ ”

“So, re-ligare?”

McConaughey starts nodding. “To bind us together again,” he says. He gently pushes away his plate. “That’s how I read it, anyway,” he says. “That’s what I’m after. I’m religious. We are religious. You can say that.”

[From Esquire via Huffington Post]

Not everyone gets McConaughey, and not everyone thinks his way of talking isn’t some kind of affectation. That’s why McConaughey went out of his way to be accommodating, so that he would be portrayed well. Only he got someone who had already made up his mind about him. All the golf and hospitality in the world wouldn’t have made this guy write a positive profile.

Photos from Esquire

The lovely Matthew McConaughey was on Piers Morgan on Friday making me swoon with his sexy drawl. He’s promoting The Lincoln Lawyer, which is still fourth at the box office in its second week. It hasn’t yet recouped its production budget, but is hanging in there. It’s a shame because it’s said to be a solid legal thriller.

McConaughey gave a lot of great quotes, as is typical for him, and my favorite was when he checked out a clip of Matt Damon doing an impression of him on The Late Show in 2006. He smiled and said that it was a good job, but added that he didn’t know Damon that well. He also said he’d sent him a bunch of t-shirts from his J.K. Livin Foundation with a note that he didn’t need them, (since Damon joked that McConaughey is always taking off his shirt) but that Damon never sent him a thank you note.

In this web extra, McConaughey tells Piers Morgan about his first – and arguably most iconic – movie role in “Dazed and Confused.” “That was my first job and I could not have been handed a more fortunate working experience,” he said. McConaughey said the role came about because he was “in the right bar at the right time.”

There are a lot of McConaughey impressions – what does he think of Matt Damon’s?

“That’s pretty good,” he said after watching it. “He did a good job on that, it sounds a lot like me.” McConaughey said he recently sent Damon some t-shirts, with a note: “obviously I don’t need these…. I never got a thank you.”

[From CNN.com]

Aw, Damon should have at least sent a note back! Especially because McConaughey is his go-to impression.

McConaughey also talked about the first time he met his partner, Camila Alves, and how it felt so natural because they were so open and honest with each other. As for whether he’s ever going to make it official by marrying her, he said that not being married “doesn’t make me any less committed. It doesn’t make me love her any less.” That was really sweet.

As for how he’s stayed grounded after making a mint in movies, McConaughey said that he has money saved but that doesn’t mean he’s wasteful with it or forgets the lessons he’s learned about hard work:

I got a nice egg… I’m going, OK, I’m going to be fine, my lady is going to be fine, my kids are going to be fine. And we can go on living our lifestyle.

We’re not that indulgent. We don’t do that much stuff. But sometimes, you know, there are months when we get around the holidays and stuff where I look at the monthly bill and go, oh, yes, we spent some. That was a good one.

Don’t have to worry about [bills] but we’re pretty thrifty. And I think that comes from, you know, value of a dollar whether you’ve got — you know, and when you’re — I grew up, raised value of a dollar, you work for what you get. You want to go out Friday night? We’ll do the chores of the house.

[From Transcripts.CNN.com]

I love watching this guy’s interviews because he seems like such a genuine person. You know what you’re getting with McConaughey, and he seems to like that trait in his women too.

Here’s a segment where he talks about if he’s ever paid to see a romantic comedy. The answer is “no”!

McConaughey is shown on 3/10/11 at the Lincoln Lawyer premiere. He’s also shown with Camila, his mom and brother, Rooster. Credit: WENN.com

I’m a Matthew McConaughey fan. He’s been looking kind of gaunt and greasy lately, but I’ll overlook it. That’s why it makes me sad to learn that The Lincoln Lawyer tanked at the box office this weekend and came a full third to Bradley Cooper’s Limitless. Lincoln Lawyer is faring better on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 81% rating to Limitless‘ 65%. Still Limitless is about the American dream of high achievement in a pill, and it has DeNiro in it. It came in first but only pulled in $19 million. Not a lot of people went to the movies this weekend, and I know it was one of the first warm weekends we had so I wasn’t going to waste it indoors. Here’s more from Box Office Mojo:

Despite decent starts for Limitless, Paul and The Lincoln Lawyer, overall weekend business was off nine percent from the same period last year, when Alice in Wonderland, The Bounty Hunter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid led, and attendance was on the low end for the third weekend of March.

Limitless packed an estimated $19 million on approximately 3,200 screens at 2,756 locations. That trailed the opening weekends of recent thrillers Unknown ($21.9 million) and The Adjustment Bureau ($21.2 million). Among other comparable titles, it was close to Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps ($19 million) but was behind 21 ($24.1 million) and The Social Network ($22.4 million) (Limitless copied the latter with its heavy usage of Kanye West’s “Power”). Not too shabby for Bradley Cooper’s first real star vehicle, though the movie was heavily-promoted, including three spots on Super Bowl Sunday (though Box Office Mojo readers voted it the worst Super Bowl ad). The marketing hammered out a simple message embodied by the movie’s tagline, “What if a pill could make you rich and powerful?” (though the brain enhancement aspect was glossed over), and this dovetailed with Cooper’s arrogant, partying persona from The Hangover and other movies. According to exit polling from distributor Relativity Media, which heralded its first respectable launch, Limitless’s audience was 52 percent female and 60 percent was aged 25 years and older.

The Lincoln Lawyer drew an estimated $13.4 million on around 3,000 screens at 2,707 locations, which was star Matthew McConaughey’s top-grossing start in a non-comedy-or-action movie since his breakout in A Time to Kill. That’s not saying much as Lincoln Lawyer was pretty average otherwise, faring a bit better than the nationwide debuts of Michael Clayton and Fracture, but it gets extra points considering the paucity of legal thrillers in recent years and how its television spots made it look nearly indistinguishable from similar T.V. fare. Those ads were incoherent and murky, largely failing to explain the movie’s basic premise to the uninitiated. Fortunately, Lincoln Lawyer had other things going for it, such as being based on a bestselling novel, and it received extra publicity from a $6 movie ticket deal through discount site Groupon.com. Nearly 190,000 tickets were sold through Groupon, and just under 40,000 were estimated to have been redeemed over the weekend, according to distributor Lionsgate. Lionsgate counted those tickets at full price in its reporting, but that only inflated the gross by less than $100,000. Publicity was the primary aim of the Groupon deal, and Lionsgate’s research showed that 89 percent of Groupon buyers would not have seen the movie otherwise. Lincoln Lawyer’s demographic breakdown was 63 percent female and 85 percent aged 25 years and older.

[From Box Office Mojo]

I didn’t realize the McConaughey has never fared that well at the box office, but it’s not like he’s been putting out great movies or has starred in an action series. I expected Lincoln Lawyer to do much better, since I saw the coupons on Groupon and the ads seemed to be everywhere online. Maybe now we know why McConaughey is always going around shirtless and bringing his adorable sons with him to the beach – the guy has to get some press. I still love him, though. CNN has a new interview with him (below) in which he said he loves to go around without a shirt and that his movie Surfer Dude (2008) had his ideal wardrobe for that reason. He also explained that he went to law school but decided he didn’t want to wait until he was 28 to get out into the world. I’m sure the high workload and brainpower required had nothing to do with it. Instead he went to film production school and the rest is history.

Does this mean that Bradley Cooper is a big star now? It’s pretty telling that he made his split announcement on the day his movie came out, as Agent Bedhead pointed out. We’ll have to hear more about his love life whenever he takes another girlfriend. I heard Olivia Wilde is free and can use the publicity.

Here’s McConaughey’s CNN interview.

Limitless trailer:

Lincoln Lawyer trailer:

God knows, I love Pink. I really do! She’s cool and she’s tough but she doesn’t try too hard. I even love seeing her “bump” photos – for a while, she seemed to be carrying small, and she was an adorable pregnant lady. Unfortunately, THIS happened. This is Pink at last night’s premiere of The Lincoln Lawyer, a film I kind of want to see just because I enjoy cheesy legal thrillers. Pink wore this crazy, navel-grazing muumuu that makes her look like a HUGE blueberry. Now, I’m not opposed to pregnant ladies wearing muumuus, at all. I’m not opposed to any woman wearing muumuus, in general. But not on a red carpet!!! Honestly, though, I think maybe I would have accepted the muumuu if the hair had been better. This hair is ten different kinds of tragic. Grey mushroom cap? For real?

Also at the premiere, the star of the film, Matthew McConaughey, who looked all kinds of rough as well. Is it just the horrendous fake tan? It’s something else, right? Something weird is happening with his face. I think it may be a combination of orange-ness, receding hair line, hair too long in the back, skin damage, weight loss and just general grossness. Camila looks pretty though.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I was all ready to report on Matthew McConaughey’s cover for Men’s Fitness before I saw him at the Oscars. McConaughey presented the sound awards along with Scarlet Johansson and he looked awful. His face was streaky orange, like his foundation or spray tan wasn’t blended well, and he had greasy thinning hair. Now I’m sure his hair has been thinning for some time but I’m guessing that he has plugs and hides it well when it’s not slicked back from his face. Plus his girlfriend seems like a famewhore to me lately. I don’t know, I used to love McConaughey but I’m souring on him a little.

McConaughey, 41, is the cover guy for the April issue of Men’s Fitness. Unlike a lot of past cover models he’s unfortunately wearing a tank top. When his fine abs aren’t on display you can see how short his arms are relative to his torso. He looks good here though and I love to hear the guy talk. He has such a colorful way of describing everything, and in this interview he doesn’t disappoint. McConaughey is known for his outdoor workouts, and he says that comes from his childhood:

On his workout philosophy
McConaughey’s mother always told him, “If it’s light outside, you must be out of the house.” This partly wxplains why he prefers outdoor workouts (jungles and trails) instead of training in a gym, and why for years tabloid paps have snapped pics of his lean, muscular, and shirtless physique running, running and running some more – usually on a beach. “It’s always been a lifestyle,” he says. “Then it became something that was like, ‘Hey, it’s also good for my job.’ I’m not a professional athlete, but I have a job where I like to look good and be as healthy as possible.”

His weight at 5’11 tall
Depending on his gig, his weight swings from 176 to 194 pounds. On the day we meet, he’s at 186, his physical peak.

On hiking in French Polynesia with Camila Alves
“We went up 3,000 feet and I had on hiking shoes and I was all set up and ready to go and she was wearing Havaianas sandals and a white skirt. I came down to the bottom of that hill afterward and had blood on me, muddy as all get-out, and that girl didn’t have a speck of dust on her.”

On his diet
“You can’t put me in front of a buffet line and tell me to eat right. If it’s there, I’m going to fill that plate up.”

Still, McConaughey says his clan eats healthy whenever possible. He and Camila do their own cooking, often with fresh ingredients from their backyard garden. For a snack, Matthew might eat a red pepper or an avocado, which quells the urge for chocolate. Come mealtime, he usually allows himself unlimited amounts of salad, topped with a dressing made with white vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, shallots and garlic. He rounds out the meal with brown or Indian rice, plus a touch of pickled pepper sauce. For protein, the family may have grilled fish or chicken breasts four days in a row, but homemade sauces and seasonings from three different continents give the main course distinctive tastes.

On his relationship with Camila
“It’s all working out good, man. Working out real good.” The time just had to be right, he says.

[From Men's Fitness, print edition, April, 2010]

Matthew lost a lot of appeal for me with his orange face at the Oscars, but all he has to do is wash his hair, take a shower, and go out jogging without a shirt again and I’ll forgive him. Seeing these photos of him working out reminds me of the hot guy with the drawl I used to adore. He missed a real opportunity to pose shirtless here, but maybe he wants to lose some pounds first so he looks extra ripped.

McConaughey’s next film, The Lincoln Lawyer, is out on March 18. Here’s a link to the trailer. It also stars Ryan Phillippe. It looks cheesy and overwrought but it might be decent.

For more from Matthew McConaughey, including workout tips from his trainer, check out the April issue of Men’s Fitness.

These photos are from last night’s Heart Truth’s Red Dress fashion show (it supports funding for women’s heart disease, etc). Matthew McConaughey came out to support his lady Camila Alves, who walked the runway. Ordinarily, Matthew McConaughey never comes to mind for HGF. It’s not that I find Matt particularly unattractive. He has all of the right parts and everything, and his body is great (minus the dinosaur arms), but… he’s not really “hot” to me, ever. But I have to admit, he looks really good here. Nice tan, and it doesn’t look orange. Nice outfit. His hair is… thinning but manageable. And he looks even better because he looks nice and confident and “Just Keep Livin’” standing next to Camila “Let Me Arch My Back And Show You The Angles Because I AM HIGH FASHION” Alves.

It was truly a star-studded event at Wednesday’s night’s Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection show to kick off Fashion Week at Lincoln Center. With a star-only roster of models in stunning scarlet dresses by a pantheon of designers, the front row fans included Matthew McConaughey (supporting girlfriend Camila Alves in Kaufman Franco), Bill Rancic (cheering on wife Giuliana Rancic in Marchesa) and Susan Sarandon (applauding for daughter Eva Amurri in Chris Benz).

Julianne Hough opened the upbeat show in her custom Swarovski crystal necklace and satin gown, even giving a perfect twirl mid-stage. Following waves and giggles from Audrina Patridge, in shimmering Badgley Mischka, and a perfectly-timed dropped strap of her Zac Posen gown by Dita von Teese, Alves hit the stage — and so did McConaughey (almost)!

The beaming star lunged out of his front row seat, enthusiastically snapping photos of his gorgeous girlfriend, who walked the runway with the grace and seasoned strut of a true pro. The show ended with Natasha Bedingfield serenading the crowd in a slinky Nicole Miller gown on behalf of sponsor Diet Coke. She got the fashion crowd — and Rancic! — to wave their hands in the air before the models filed out to wild cheering and a standing ovation.

[From People]

So, everything was for a good cause and obviously Camila and Matt are still tight and everything’s cool, baby. Good for them. They keep their junk undercover for the most part… although there are always new photos of their kids floating around. But it doesn’t seem like a famewhore thing, unlike some kid photo-ops. But I may have to rethink that after seeing Camila almost bust something just so the camera would get her best angle (for charity).

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I know this is evidence of what a slow news day this is (I mean, our biggest story of the day is about how Jessica Simpson looks pregnant). But I just watched the trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, and it actually looks… not bad. I’m almost going to say that I would probably-definitely see this in some kind of dollar-movie and/or first week rental situation. Pajiba points out – I think correctly – that Matthew McConaughey is at his best – nay, tolerable – when he’s allowed to be a bit sleazy and dirty. I never really bought him as a straight-up romantic lead, though, although his rom-coms have done pretty well, depending on his costar. In some ways, McCounaughey is a throw-back to a different era – I could see him being a leading, in-demand actor back in the 1940s, in the age of screwball comedies and pearl-clutching melodrama. But as a modern star, Matt is kind of lacking. But this looks okay:

Ryan Phillippe is playing it “sleazy” too, although for him I don’t think it’s much of a stretch. Marisa Tomei plays Matthew‘s love interest, I think. And smaller roles filled by William H. Macy and Josh Lucas – will this be worth the rental? Will Matthew have another hit on his hands?

This is not Matthew McConaughey. This is some alien hybrid of McConaughey, a biscuit, a giraffe and… Tom Cruise, maybe? There’s definitely some gene-splicing going on. And I’m almost positive they just stuck his alien head onto another dude’s body, because something about the neck/face/shoulder ratio is messing with me. Anyway, this is a new image from Matthew’s return engagement as the alien-face of Dolce & Gabbana’s fragrance campaign. The perfume/cologne is called The One Gentleman, and it debuts in October magazines. This was shot by an actual word-famous photographer – Jean Baptiste Mondino. No word on what 14-year-old did the Photoshop for it.

I wonder why Matthew was chosen for this. I don’t look at photos of him and think “I bet he smells nice.” I look at photos of him and think “I bet he has cheese growing in places I have no interest in seeing. And his dinosaur arms suck.” Of course, if they let me be in charge of advertising, dudes like Clive Owen, Vincent Cassel and Michael Fassbender would be the face of every ad campaign. Speaking of Fassbender, who do I have to blow to get him some press?

For their part, Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce said they chose Matt because, “He is worldly, successful, impeccable but he also boasts something else such as an innate elegance that distinguishes him from the rest. Men would love to be him, women to be his…” Barf. They were the ones who greenlit the Madonna ad campaign, otherwise known as “Grandma Madge and her weird alien face wrestle some chickens and her weird-looking grandson.” Dolce & Gabbana are in desperate need of glasses.

Here’s how McConaughey really looks… he’s an attractive man, but he’s aging naturally, bless his heart, and let’s not pretend that he’s some alien-faced, wrinkle-less hybrid, alright?

Ad courtesy of Styleist.

Above is a photo of Matthew McConaughey’s girlfriend/baby-mama Camila Alves, out and about last Friday. Fame Pictures asked if she was covering her “trim tummy” for a reason, like her third pregnancy. I didn’t really think anything of it, really, except that I looked through some photos of Camila from the past month, and she does seem to be avoiding clothes with a defined waist, instead opting for empire waists and anything baggy. Like this photo of Matthew and Camila at an event for Dolce & Gabbana:

Right? Although…there is this photo where she’s wearing a gorgeous tight-fitting black strapless from June 15th. Jesus, I want this dress:

Here it is from an angle:

Eh. Camila just gave birth to their second child, daughter Vida, on January 3, so the baby is only six months old. Sure, Camila is totally fertile and she and Matthew seem to enjoy being parents, but would Matthew knock her up again right away? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows. I think she’s looking a little bumpy in these photos, but I think she may still have a little baby weight from Vida.

By the way, this is my new favorite photo. Camila and baby Vida are both so gorgeous, it’s not even funny. These photo is so pretty, it looks like an airbrushed ad for jeans, you know? And I would totally be buying:

Camila on June 25, 2010 & June 15 & 16, 2010. Credit: Fame.

Matthew McConaughey has shared a photo of his newborn daughter, Vida, on his website. Little Vida was born to Matthew and his longterm girlfriend, Camila Alves, on January 3. The photo was taken in the hospital and Visa is sleeping while Matt and Camila look at each other lovingly. It’s one of the cutest and most intimate first baby photos I’ve seen, and all that’s missing is their older child Levi, one and a half. There’s something to be said for the fact that McConaughey has his own charity but they made the decision not to sell the photo, even for a good cause, and to release it free of charge. They premiered Levi in OK! Magazine and gave the proceeds to McConaughey’s JK Livin foundation.

Meet Matthew McConaughey’s new daughter Vida!

On his official website, the actor, 40, and girlfriend Camila Alves have released the first photo of their baby girl, who was born Jan. 3 in Los Angeles (she weighed in at 7 lbs., 7 oz.).

“Our latest family member, Vida Alves McConaughey,” McConaughey wrote under the baby’s photo.

Alves, who makes her debut as host of the Bravo hairstyling reality show Shear Genius on Feb. 3, tells the new Us Weekly (out now) that the baby “is doing great.”

“It’s easier with the second child, because, you know what she’ll be like,” said Alves, 27, who welcomed their first child, son Levi, in 2008.

She said their 19-month-old son is “at the fun stage where he’s talking. He loves saying Vida’s name!”

McConaughey couldn’t be a more doting dad, she added.

Said Alves, “To see a father with his child is beautiful.”

[From US Weekly]

Yesterday we heard that there may be a hint of trouble in McConaughey and Alves’ relationship and that Alves’ mother was pressuring her daughter to get a formal agreement out of McConaughey. The couple is not married and Alves’ mother is said to be concerned about her daughter’s future. It’s probably an issue that they’re not overly concerned about and will work out in time.

Vida is a lovely name and it means “life” in both Spanish and Alves’ first language, Portugese. Vida is sleeping in this picture and her face is all scrunched up, but you can see how adorable she is. I want to kiss her little head and cheeks. Will Matthew eventually share the story of his daughter’s arrival with a colorful description of the birth scene? We can only hope.