Matthew McConaughey sheds 30 pounds for his role in The Dallas Buyer's Club

Actor Matthew McConaughey, who has been on a weight loss spree for his latest role, has become unrecognizable in recent weeks. The 42-year-old actor has lost a total of 30 pounds to play an AIDS patient inThe Dallas Buyer's Club. The film is set in the mid-1980s and is based on the true story of a man with AIDS who tried to find experimental HIV drugs to save himself, reported People magazine.

When McConaughey had lost 15 of the 30 pounds, he told Larry King's Ora TV web series Larry King Now, "I should not look healthy by the time I'm doing this. It's a bit of a spiritual cleanse, mental cleanse. [I'm] drinking a lot of tea … It takes a while for your body to understand that it has to feed off of itself and that you're not going to give it something else from the outside.”