McConaughey almost quit Hollywood over 'rom com years'

Matthew McConaughey almost quit Hollywood after getting typecast following his “rom-com years”.

The star of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days took two years off from acting when he felt he wasn’t getting enough meaty parts, before returning to star in more dramatic roles in The Lincoln Lawyer, True Detective and his Academy Award-winning turn in The Dallas Buyers Club.

“I’ve usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag,” the 54-year-old heart-throb told fellow actor Glen Powell, 35, for Interview magazine.

“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.”

McConaughey described the decision as “scary”, and he heavily relied on the support of his wife Camila Alves, 41, with whom he has children Levi, 15, Vida, 14, and Livingston, 11.

“Dude, it was scary,” he said. “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..k you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later.’”

McConaughey also reminisced about his “first big success”, the 1996 Joe Schumacher legal drama A Time To Kill, and how it impacted his career.

“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,” he said.

“Over that one weekend, 99 noes became 99 yeses. 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? Because sometimes you can get paralysed 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.’”