Matthew McConaughey is campaigning for his old friend!
On Sunday, January 19, the actor, 55, shared a series of images with his famous friends on Instagram from the 2025 Joy Awards in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the caption, he nominated Anthony Hopkins for the coveted title of PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive.
The first photo showed McConaughey posing with Hopkins. The two were both dressed in black suits for the formal event. Hopkins, 87, put his arm around McConaughey’s shoulder for the photo, while the Sing 2 star pointed at Hopkins with a smile on his face.
The carousel continued with a selfie of McConaughey and Morgan Freeman, as well as a friendly shot of Martin Lawrence fixing McConaughey’s bow tie.
The post was a reunion of sorts with McConaughey, Hopkins and Freeman all starring together in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama Amistad.
McConaughey captioned the post commenting on each photo, writing, “1. it’s time for this gentleman to be the sexiest man alive / 2. 1st class legend mensch / 3. I mean who else do you want to straighten your tie before you go on stage?”
The Dallas Buyers Club The star’s loud show of support for Hopkins comes nearly two decades after he himself was named PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2005.
He reflected on the honor in an interview with PEOPLE in 2024, saying, “People tell me, ‘You’re no longer the sexiest man alive, McConaughey’ for the past 19 years, every time someone else has been crowned. And I say, ‘Well, I’m still alive.’ “
He added: “If that’s your name and you’re still alive, you’re still the sexiest man alive. That was my joke about everything.”
In December 2024, the Oscar winner announced a new weekly newsletter called Lyrics of Livin’, described as “a collection of thought-provoking notes, tips, truths, and inspirations collected over decades of his life.”
Ammar Roaid/Patrick McMullan via Getty I
“I have been journaling and writing down good times, bad times, let-downs and let-downs in a diary for over forty years, and as you may know, many of those diary entries inspired my book Green lights“, McConaughey, who published his memoir in 2020, said in a statement.
“That got me thinking: What if I didn’t wait another forty years to share my thoughts, prescriptions, tips, truths, and inspirations: things I’ve seen, said, stolen, and heard along the way that can help us become more Greenlights to be found in our lives and a little rhyme to our reason,” he added.
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Earlier this month, McConaughey’s wife Camila, whom he has been married to since 2012, opened up about what her husband is really like behind his public persona.
“When we first started dating, it was this image of Matthew: getting high, relaxed, shirtless, whatever,” she said on Southern Living’s Cookies & Jam podcast. “I thought, ‘That guy doesn’t even smoke. Where did this vision come from?’ ”
Camila, 41 – who shares three children with her the actor – then described his true personality, saying: “He’s basically the opposite, and he looks just like his mother.”
She continued, “She’s very organized, very minimalist, very on time, very prepared, and he gets a lot of those qualities from her.”