Why Matthew McConaughey Almost Quit Acting

Matthew McConaughey's filmography made a drastic shift after the two-year break.

By Anna Rumer

Matthew McConaughey nearly walked away from Hollywood altogether before making a total shift in his career. The 54-year-old actor, who was known early on as a rom-com king for his roles in films like The Wedding Planner and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, opened up about the dramatic decision to walk away from acting for two years while in conversation with Glen Powell for Interview Magazine.

McConaughey explained to the Hit Man star, 35, that the more rom-coms he starred in, the less he felt like Hollywood was willing to give him other kinds of roles. "I've usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag," he said in the interview published on June 10. "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."

Asked if he was "aware" he would be stepping away from acting for two years, McConaughey admitted it was "scary" to take such a risk. "I had long talks with my wife [Camila Alves] 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,'" he 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, "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."

The risk paid off, however, and McConaughey would move on to more dramatic roles in films like Interstellar and Dallas Buyers Club, which won him an Oscar for Best Actor. 

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The Texas native previously explained his reasoning for moving away from rom-coms in the May 2021 issue of AARP The Magazine, saying that while he "enjoyed making them" and they "paid well," he felt there was "a certain buoyancy built into rom-coms that isn't about hanging your hat on humanity like a drama is."

"If you go deep in a rom-com you can sink the ship. In my life, though, I was going very deep," he reasoned, crediting his marriage to Alves and becoming a father with the emotional shift. "I had more things to get angry about, laugh about, have more joy about and be sad about," McConaughey said. "The ceilings and basements had more depth and height to them, and I wanted to do work that reflected my personal vitality."

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