Rust Cohle

Rustin Spencer "Rust" Cohle is a fictional character portrayed by Matthew McConaughey in the first season of the HBO's anthology television series True Detective. He works as a homicide detective for the Louisiana State Police (LSP) alongside his partner Marty Hart, portrayed by Woody Harrelson. The season follows Cohle and Hart's hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana across 17 years. The character of Rust Cohle and Matthew McConaughey's performance have gained critical acclaim. McConaughey received a Critics' Choice Television Award and nominations for a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. Character overview Cohle is introduced as a gifted but deeply troubled detective from Texas who has newly transferred to the LSP's criminal investigation division. He and Hart are tasked with investigating a brutal and bizarre murder. A solitary cynic, Cohle is a nihilist and believes that human beings are merely "sentient meat". Cohle spends his free time obsessing over every detail of the crime, hoarding evidence and keeping extensive notes in a ledger, which earns him the derisive nickname "The Taxman" among his colleagues. The series gradually reveals Cohle's backstory. He was born in South Texas but raised in Alaska by his survivalist Vietnam veteran father after his parents divorced. He joined the Houston Police Department as a young man and became a detective in a robbery squad. Sometime in the mid to late 1980s, his two-year-old daughter, Sophia, was hit by car and killed; a tragedy that destroyed his marriage. Devastated by the loss, Cohle grew evermore unstable, eventually killing a crystal meth addict who had injected his own child with the drug. His superiors offered him a chance to avoid prison by working as an undercover narcotics detective in a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), which he did for four years; Cohle notes that this was twice as long as most undercover detectives are kept in rotation. During this assignment, Cohle became addicted to drugs, and eventually killed three drug cartel members in a shootout at the Port of Houston, while being shot multiple times himself.