The actor Matthew McConaughey appears to be seriously considering entering politics, according to a report on Sunday which said the Dallas Buyer’s Club star has been “quietly making calls to influential people in Texas political circles” as he mulls a run for governor.

McConaughey, 51, was born in Uvalde, Texas, and lives in Austin, the state capital, with his wife and children. Last year he published an autobiography of sorts and in March he told a Texas podcast running for governor was “a true consideration”.

“I’m looking into now again, what is my leadership role?” he said. “Because I do think I have some things to teach and share, and what is my role? What’s my category in my next chapter of life that I’m going into?”

Brendan Steinhauser, an Austin-based Republican strategist, told Politico, which reported the McConaughey calls, he was “a little more surprised that people aren’t taking him more seriously, honestly.

“Celebrity in this country counts for a lot … it’s not like some C-list actor no one likes. He has an appeal.”

McConaughey’s other recent screen credits include The Wolf of Wall Street, for Martin Scorsese; The Gentlemen, directed by Guy Ritchie; and Free State of Jones, about a civil war deserter who led an uprising against the slave-owning Confederacy.

He also has an impressive three entries – The Paperboy, The Wedding Planner and Serenity – in Hear Me Out, a Guardian series in which writers make a case for why widely loathed movies deserve to be re-examined.

In the US, entertainment often bleeds into politics. Ronald Reagan was an actor before campaigning for rightwing causes, becoming governor of California and beating an incumbent, Jimmy Carter, for the White House. The bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, the wrestler Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota.

And, of course, when Donald Trump ran for the White House in 2016, he owed his fame more to a reality TV hit, The Apprentice, than to his bankruptcy-flecked career in real estate.

McConaughey is not alone in pondering a switch from Hollywood to a governor’s mansion. The reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner is in the early – if faltering – stages of a run in California, as Republicans seek to recall Gavin Newsom.

The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, will seek a third term next year. He remains a formidable figure, despite controversy over his handling of a winter storm earlier this year which crippled the power grid, left 125 Texans dead and made state Republicans a national laughing stock.

Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Trump and Jenner ran as Republicans. Ventura was the candidate of the Reform Party, his victory a major shock.

McConaughey’s views are mostly a mystery. Karl Rove, a senior adviser to the last governor of Texas to become president, George W Bush, told Politico he found a McConaughey run “improbable, but not out of the question” and said “the question is: Would he run as a Republican? A Democrat? Independent? And where is he on the political scale?

“He says he has a funny phrase about being a hardcore centrist, but what party would he run under?”

Democratic hopes of turning Texas blue – or at least purple, away from its baked-in ruby red Republicanism – have continually come up short.

In 2018, Beto O’Rourke, a congressman, made national headlines but failed to eject Ted Cruz from the US Senate. In 2020 the state’s other Republican senator, John Cornyn, also survived a much-hyped challenge.

Earlier this month a long slate of Democratic candidates in a race for an open US House seat effectively cancelled each other out, two Republicans making the runoff.

O’Rourke failed to parlay his fame into a successful presidential run and has yet to say if he will seek to challenge Abbott. Julián Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, US housing secretary and candidate for the Democratic nomination, could also run.

McConaughey’s star status is proving a considerable lure for progressives but many fear a run as an independent. Most observers reason that would only succeed in splitting the vote and ushering Abbott back into power.

A leading Democratic strategist, Paul Begala, told Politico: “Texas doesn’t need a third party, Matthew! We need a second party.”