Matthew McConaughey quit Hollywood to shed rom-com image
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."