Matthew McConaughey is a native of Texas, but that’s not the only reason he and his family now reside there.
During a recent appearance on the “Good Trouble” podcast, the Oscar-winning actor spoke with tennis pro Nick Kyrgios about his life and career.
One thing he learned, McConaughey said, was the importance of saying no.
“No, is just as important, if not more important. Especially if you have some level of success and access. No becomes more important than yes,” he said. “We all look around and see we’ve overleveraged our life with yeses and gone, geez, oh, man, I’m making C-minuses and all that s**t in my life because I said yes to too many things.”
Which is why, despite all the success he had early in his career with rom-coms like “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days,” “Fool’s Gold” and “The Wedding Planner,” McConaughey said he realized something had to change as he was on “auto pilot.”
“I was the rom-com dude, man, that was my lane, and I liked that lane. That lane paid well and it was working,” he said. “I was so strong in that lane that anything outside of that lane, dramas and stuff that I wanted to do, were like, no, no, no, no, no McConaughey. Hollywood said no, no, no, no, you should stay there, stay there.”
The “Magic Mike” star said “since I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing.”
“I moved down to the ranch in Texas,” McConaughey said. “I went down there and I made a pact with my wife [model and actress Camila Alves McConaughey] and said, ‘I’m not going back to work unless I get offered roles I want to do.’”
He stood strong in his determination, even turning down $14.5 million to star in an action comedy, he said.
It paid off for McConaughey, who went on to nab more serious roles like his work in “Dallas Buyers Club” for which he won a best actor Academy Award in 2014.