Liza Minnelli Backs Matthew McConaughey for Oscar at Lavish Lunch

"If you don't win the Academy Award," Liza Minnelli told her guest at Table One, Matthew McConaughey, "I'm giving you mine!"

Minnelli, who won Best Actress in 1973 for "Cabaret," couldn't stop praising McConaughey's performance in "Dallas Buyers Club" at a lunch she hosted in his honor held at Manhattan's chic Monkey Bar. Guests included McConaughey, Jared Leto, producer Rachel Winter, and a small circle of Academy members and industry insiders, including Yahoo Movies, seated beside McConaughey and Minnelli at Table One.

[Related: Matthew McConaughey Talks Sharing Pink Robe with Jared Leto in 'Dallas Buyers Club']

"I've watched the movie five times," Minnelli told us, praising McConaughey's honesty and risk-taking. While she confessed the movie "floored her," she said there was a scene where his HIV-Positive Texan pulls over on the side of the road to weep that knocked her out. "In that scene where he's driving and he stops the car and he starts to cry -- I feel like I don't want him to know that I am watching. It was so intimate, so private. I was so moved by it. I haven't seen performances like that in a long time. The last movie was 'On the Waterfront.'"

Minnelli also praised the performance of McConaughey's co-star, Leto, telling the Best Supporting Actor frontrunner: "Everything that you did, all the placements, every single second, I felt wonderful for you, proud for you, and sad for you all at the same time."

[Related: Jared Leto: 'I didn't Know If I'd Ever Make a Movie Again]

Leto, wearing a Sundance-ready parka indoors, returned the favor. The singer-actor praised the singer-actress for being the whole package: "craft and talent. You act from the tips of your hair to your fingertips. Every part of you is alive."

Meanwhile, as the frisee salad faded to the chicken paillard followed by the ice cream triplet and coffee, deals were being initiated. Legendary casting agent/producer Bonnie Timmermann approached Minnelli and offered her a juicy role in the upcoming feature, "On Fire," opposite Melissa Leo to be directed by Oscar winner Barbara Kopple ("American Dream"). Leo will play plays a fireman's widow who encounters resistance when she attempts to join the fire department herself. Minnelli would play the feisty but delicate mother-in-law, a non-singing role.