The Lost Bus is a family affair

Actor Matthew McConaughey stars alongside his son and mum in the thriller film

- Alison de Souza

Debuting on Apple TV+ on Oct 3, the thriller film The Lost Bus stars Matthew McConaughey as a school bus driver who battles to save 22 children from a fast-moving wildfire.

And in a first for the 55-year-old American actor, his on-screen son and mother are played by his real son and mother: Levi McConaughey, 17, and Kay McCabe McConaughey, 93.

But the star who won a Best Actor Oscar for playing an Aids patient in the biopic Dallas Buyers Club (2013) never intended for this to become a family affair.

He was surprised when his son, who had never acted before, asked to audition for the role and insisted their surname be removed from the boy's audition video so the film's English director, Paul Greengrass, had no idea who he was initially.

It all began when Matthew McConaughey first told his family about the screenplay for the movie, which is inspired by a real-life survival story from the 2018 Camp Fire, a blaze in northern California that killed 85 people.