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Matthew McConaughey quit Hollywood to shed rom-com image

Written by . Published: February 19 2014

Matthew Mcconaughey walked away from Hollywood in a bid to shed his image as the rom-com king.


The Time To Kill star stepped back from the movie industry after featuring in a slew of romantic comedies, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, Fool's Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.


He has since made a comeback with roles in acclaimed films such as Killer Joe and Mud, and most recently Oscar-nominated pictures The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.


McConaughey has now revealed he deliberately cut himself off from Hollywood in a bid to give himself a career makeover.


He tells Variety.com, "I went to my wife and my agent and said, 'I'm going to stop for a bit.' I'm going to sit back in the shadows... I just knew I was going to hold out for a while and things would dry out. I didn't know how long they would dry out for, and that was scary. I would get sent things and the paychecks were great, and I would say no. Then, they quit sending them altogether. And then... nothing. So the message got through... All of a sudden, I became a good idea for people like (Killer Joe director) William Friedkin and (moviemaker) Steven Soderbergh - people who hadn't called before, who maybe wouldn't have seen me as a good idea three years before."

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