Matthew McConaughey may be a king of rom-coms, but all was not all right, all right, all right at one point in his acting career.
While speaking with Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios on his Good Trouble podcast, the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days star recalled a time in his professional life when he felt was on “autopilot” and not producing performances that resonated with him.
“The devil’s in the infinite yeses, not the nos,” he began. “‘No’ is just as important, if not more important. Especially if you have some level of success and access. ‘No’ becomes more important than ‘yes.’ Because we can all look around and see we’ve over-leveraged our life with yeses and going, ‘Geez, oh man. I’m making C-minuses and all this sh– in my life because I said yes to too many things.’”
The Interstellar actor continued, “When I was rolling with the rom-coms, and I was the ‘rom-com dude,’ that was my lane and I liked that lane. That lane paid well, and it was working. I was so strong in that lane that anything outside that lane — dramas and stuff that I wanted to do — were like, ‘No, no, no. No, McConaughey.’ Hollywood said, ’No, no, no. You stay there.’ So, since I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing, and I moved down to the ranch in Texas.”
Making the move in the late 2000s, The Wedding Planner star said he made a pact with his wife to not return “unless I get offered roles I want to do,” which did not include his previous genre staple nor an action-comedy part for which he was initially offered $8 million and later $14.5 million — both of which he declined.
“That was probably what was seen as the most rebellious move in Hollywood by me because it really sent the signal, ‘He ain’t f—ing bluffing,’” he said of the 2010 instance, which he previously discussed in his 2020 memoir. “And when you got someone who’s not bluffing, there’s something attractive about that. I think that’s what made Hollywood go, ‘You know what? He’s now a new novel idea. He’s a new bright idea.’”
That’s what ultimately led to subsequent films like Killer Joe, True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club and Mud, he said. “When those offers came, I was salivating. And I just bit on and went back-to-back-to-back and worked as much as I could and loved it and felt every bit of it,” he concluded.
McConaughey has previously opened up about the (literal) risky move, telling Glen Powell during a conversation with Interview magazine earlier this summer that he has “usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag. When I had my rom-com years, there was only so much bandwidth I could give to those, and those were some solid hits for me.”
The Oscar winner continued at the time, “Dude, it was scary. I had long talks with my wife about needing to find a new vocation. I think I’m going to teach high school classes. I think I’m going to study to be a conductor. I think I’m going to go be a wildlife guide. I honestly thought, ‘I stepped out of Hollywood. I got out of my lane.’ The lane Hollywood said I should stay in, and Hollywood’s like, ‘Well, f— you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later.’”