Matthew McConaughey Buffs Up For Upcoming Film True Detectives: Picture

USMagazine, Thursday, March 14, 2013, 1:20pm (PDT)

Matthew McConaughey is back to his buff, hunky self! The typically beefy actor, who lost an astonishing 38 pounds in three months to play a sickly AIDS patient in The Dallas Buyer's Club last fall, stepped out in New Orleans on Wednesday, March 13, looking considerably healthier and heftier.

McConaughey, 43, showed off considerable muscle tone in a white wife-beater and grey slacks on the set of his upcoming film, True Detectives, a stark contrast from his thin frame back in November.

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The actor told Us Weekly last August that he had taken extreme measures to shed the pounds in order to portray real-life AIDS activist Ron Woodruff in the most accurate way possible.

"I'll get down to the weight I need to get to," he told Us at the time. "I'm on my way, and it's what I need to do for the job. I'm playing a guy who was sick and would have loved to have been healthier but wasn't. For me, it's more a mental thing than a physical thing."

In several startling images that surfaced last year, the actor looked gaunt while waiting in line for security at Los Angeles International Airport, his hair rumpled and a dark moustache on his lip.

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The look was all the more jolting because just a few months earlier, in 2012, McConaughey wowed audiences with his impressive -- and shirtless -- physique in Magic Mike, opposite fellow shirtless studs Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer and Joe Manganiello.

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Matthew McConaughey Buffs Up For Upcoming Film True Detectives: Picture