New Orleans ? Actor Matthew McConaughey was one of those kids who watched famed motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel on television, then went out and jumped mounds of dirt on his bike.

“My middle brother Pat would jump and get a lot of air, and they’d call him Big Knievel. Then I’d jump and only get a little air, and they’d call me Little Knievel,” McConaughey said Friday.

Now it’s Knievel’s life “between the jumps” that fascinates McConaughey, who has been in St. Francisville, about 100 miles north of New Orleans and roughly 20 miles south of the Mississippi state line, wrapping up shooting on The History Channel’s “Absolute Evel: The Evel Knievel Story.”

“If your threshold for feeling alive comes from having to jump 18 Mack trucks, then daily life can be really mundane,” McConaughey said. “I believe that when he was about to jump, that’s when he felt most right with the world. In between the jumps, that’s when life was tough.

“The lifestyle in between … had to be hell.”

McConaughey hosts The History Channel program, set to air June 13. He said he also was planning a motion picture about Knievel’s life, in which McConaughey will play Knievel.

“This is a life story I’ve been wanting to tell for a while, but I want to tell it right,” McConaughey said. “It’s tough … on the one hand, it could be a high, big budget, more expensive … more PG version. But there’s another side to this man’s life. In the ugliness is where the life comes from.”

The History Channel program will have footage of Knievel’s jumps covered by ABC’s Wide World of Sports. It’s also part autobiographical, with Knievel talking about the evolution of his daredevil career, his relationships with women, his baseball-bat beating of his former press agent, his time in jail, his poor health and his relationship with his son Robbie Knievel, also a motorcycle stuntman.