GROWING UP McConaughey!

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY IS STILL DOING HOLLYWOOD HIS WAY—AND NOW WITH HIS NEW MOVIE HE’S SHARING THE SPOTLIGHT WITH SON LEVI AND MOM KAY

- ANDREA MANDELL

If you ask Matthew McConaughey the secret to his success, the Oscar winner, who launched his career with 1993’s Dazed and Confused, directs you to the sassy blonde on his right. “You know what she says after every single film?” notes Matthew, 55, with a laugh, pointing to mom Kay, 93. “ ‘Oh, so good! I see where you get it from.’ ” Matthew’s son Levi, 17—an uncanny blend of his Texas-born movie-star dad and Brazilian American entrepreneur and former-model mom, Camila—is also on-set for their People cover shoot in Toronto and confirms this: “She told me that the other day. It’s gone generations.”

Audiences will, in fact, find out where they get it from. The trio are now marking a new family milestone starring together in The Lost Bus (on Apple TV+ Oct. 3), a survival thriller about the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, which burned more than 150,000 acres and killed 85 people. Directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew as a wayward bus driver who rescues 22 schoolchildren, the film brings Kay back onscreen 14 years after her cameo in the 2011 black comedy Bernie—and marks Levi’s debut onscreen playing Matthew’s son. “I had to badger him,” says Levi of asking his dad to join the project. Matthew—who also shares two other children, daughter Vida, 15, and son Livingston, 12, with Camila—ultimately pulled the family name off Levi’s audition tape before submitting it as a test of merit. Levi nailed it, and late in production Kay landed her own small role playing Matthew’s character’s mother, following her lifelong dream of acting (Kay says she always wanted to be on The Golden Girls).