He’s been steadily shrinking in recent weeks after signing up to lose 30lbs for an upcoming movie role. And today a frighteningly thin Matthew McConaughey was almost unrecognisable as he arrived on the set of his current project, The Wolf of Wall Street, in New York City.

Wearing a white T-shirt, jeans and flip flops the Texan, who recently played a hunky stripper in the raunchy movie Magic Mike, was a shadow of his former self.

Filming for the flick, based on a memoir by Jordan Belfort who spent 22 months in jail for offenses related to stock market manipulation and running a boiler room, began in Manhattan earlier this month.

The movie, directed by Martin Scorsese, also features Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and French Academy Award winner Jean Dujardin and is set to open in theaters in 2013. But his weight loss is for his next role in The Dallas Buyer’s Club.

McConaughey told Larry King in a recent interview: ‘I’m playing a guy who was sick and would have loved to have been healthier but wasn’t.

‘For me, it’s more of a mental thing than a physical thing. I’ll get down to the weight I need to get to. I’m on my way, and it’s what I need to do for the job.’

The father-of-two, whose wife Camilla Alves is expecting their third child this fall, has been taking a philosophical approach to his punishing diet.

‘It’s a bit of a spiritual cleanse, mental cleanse,’ the 42-year-old said. ‘[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,’ he adds.

The gritty role is based on the real life story of a Dallas man named Ron Woodruff, who contracted HIV through drug use in the ‘80s.

Elite.