Why Matthew McConaughey Quit Doing Rom-Coms

Matthew McConaughey has dozens of credits to his name, and it’s no secret that he is well-known for romantic comedies. The actor notably starred in The Wedding Planner, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure To Launch, Fool’s Gold, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, but despite finding plenty of success in the genre, McConaughey decided to change his reputation as “the go-to rom-com guy” and entered his successful McConaissance era.

“I was the go-to rom-com guy. I enjoyed making them, and they paid well. I was leading a successful life as an actor. But there’s a certain buoyancy built into rom-coms that isn’t about hanging your hat on humanity, like a drama is,” McConaughey explained in an interview for AARP The Magazine‘s May 2021 cover story. “If you go deep in a rom-com you can sink the ship. In my life, though, I was going very deep.”

McConaughey credited several major life changes for influencing his decision to step away from rom-coms, noting, “I found the love of my life in Camila [Alves]. We had a newborn coming. I had more things to get angry about, laugh about, have more joy about and be sad about.” The actor said, “The ceilings and basements had more depth and height to them, and I wanted to do work that reflected my personal vitality.”

McConaughey was so serious about his McConaissance that he even attempted to take pay cuts to show how serious he was, but “no matter how much of a pay cut I would take, dramas were not being offered to me.” Although some “thought I was out of my freaking mind,” the actor said his wife “said, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re not going to half-a- it.’” At her encouragement, McConaughey “quit” and “went on a sabbatical away from Hollywood. I said no to every rom-com script that came my way. I turned down one for $14.5 million.”

“No offers came in for almost a year and a half. I was now shaking hands with the fact that I may never work in Hollywood again. It pinched me a little, but I was OK with it. It was time for a new chapter in my life,” he shared. “You didn’t see me in your living room or movie theater in a rom-com. You didn’t see me shirtless on the beach every weekend in Malibu. ‘Where’d McConaughey go?’ I found anonymity.”

Of course, that was far from the end of McConaughey’s acting journey. What followed were roles in everything from Lincoln Lawyer to Magic Mike, Mud and Dallas Buyers Club. McConaughey concluded, “I unbranded those two years to then rebrand. All of a sudden, I became a new, novel idea. The dramas came my way, and I jumped on them.”