Matthew McConaughey Looks Back at Hollywood Hiatus, Explains Why He Almost Quit Acting
Matthew McConaughey is looking back at his two-year break from Hollywood.
After starring in several rom-coms, the 54-year-old Oscar-winning actor took a break from acting to avoid being typecast and moved back to his home state of Texas where he considered quitting Hollywood altogether.
In a new conversation with Glen Powell for Interview magazine, Matthew opened up about his break from Hollywood before returning in 2010s and landing more serious roles in projects including The Lincoln Lawyer, True Detective, and Dallas Buyers Club.
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“I’ve usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag,” Matthew shared. “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. But I wanted to try some other stuff. Of course I wasn’t getting it, so I had to leave Hollywood for two years.”
“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,’” Matthew recalled. “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–k you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later.’”
He continued, “It was scary. The days are long — the sense of insignificance. But I made up my mind that that’s what I needed to do, so I wasn’t going to pull the parachute and quit the mission I was on. But it was scary, because I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of the desert.”
Matthew went on to admit that he knew it would be difficult to shake off being typecast in just rom-coms, especially when box office success was the only way to land more roles.
“For me, going back to A Time to Kill, after I first had a big success in a major studio picture and became famous, I remembered that the Thursday before that movie opened, there’s 100 scripts out there that I would’ve done, and 99 of them I could not book. Over that one weekend, 99 noes became 99 yeses,” Matthew recalled. “I was like, ‘What? Three days ago, I’d have done any of these! And now you’re asking me which one I want to do?’ It was a hell of a shocking thing. I chucked on a backpack and went to Peru for three weeks just so I could hear myself think.”
“Have you had to go, ‘I would’ve done any of these roles, but now I’ve got to be discerning?’ I’ve had similar runs where I’ve said no to things, where I’m like, ‘Am I being too safe, or am I ferociously chasing what I want?’” Matthew continued. “Because sometimes you can get paralyzed in the no’s. I’ve had plenty of times in my career where I’m like, ‘I don’t know what I want to do, I just know I don’t want to do that.’”
In another recent interview, Matthew shared how fatherhood made him a better actor.