Matthew McConaughey once explained why he doesn’t want Tom Cruise’s career
These days, Matthew McConaughey has reached a point in his career where he can pretty much do whatever he wants. In the wake of his last theatrically released film – The Gentlemen – he only committed to voice roles for a few years. He lent his distinctive drawl to Sing 2, the Netflix spy comedy Agent Elvis, and popped up for a cameo Cowboypool in Deadpool & Wolverine. Outside of acting, he has explored the worlds of politics and literature, penning two works – the unique memoir Greenlights and the children’s book Just Because.
The laconic star’s next two big live-action roles will come in the crime drama The Rivals of Amziah King and The Lost Bus, a drama about the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history. Interestingly, even though it’s taken McConaughey a few years to get back in the saddle, the films certainly sound in keeping with the ones he made in the “McConaissance” in the early 2010s. This was the period in which McConaughey cast off the perceived baggage of a decade of rom-com roles and committed himself to be a “serious” actor again.
McConaughey’s turns in movies like The Lincoln Lawyer, Killer Joe, Mud, and Magic Mike primed audiences for the peak of his resurgence with his Oscar-winning portrayal of Ron Woodroof in 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club. Soon after that, he picked up an Emmy nomination for his iconic performance as nihilistic cop Rustin ‘Rust’ Cohle in True Detective and then headlined Christopher Nolan’s thoughtful sci-fi epic Interstellar.
Looking at this list of projects, it’s easy to see that McConaughey is someone who desires a varied career. At one point, he took on many rom-coms and dipped his toe into action territory with the likes of Sahara and Reign of Fire, but it wasn’t really where his heart lay. In 2013, while speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, McConaughey admitted he did make a conscious decision to alter his career path.
“I took about a year and a half, two years off,” revealed McConaughey. “I was receiving scripts; there were some action scripts, and there were some romantic comedies. Some I even liked. Some that came with beautiful paychecks…There was nothing wrong with them. But I was like, ‘You know what? I am at a point right now that I don’t have to work. If I can just skip work, I can sit back.'”
The star told his agent that he didn’t want to be considered for that kind of script anymore, and over time, things began to change. He explained: “It went through saying no to things, and then it kind of dried up. There was nothing. Then a funny thing happened.” Directors like William Friedkin and Stephen Soderbergh suddenly began approaching McConaughey, and he was finally able to say yes to projects he was passionate about.
The interviewer then drew a parallel with Tom Cruise, who she accused of making “awfully familiar” films in the action genre in the 2000s. In fact, she believed Cruise had lost the ability to surprise an audience – something which McConaughey had retained. Taking the high road, McConaughey didn’t specifically denigrate Cruise’s career, but he did explain that he has found great joy working in independent cinema. This, of course, is something a star of Cruise’s magnitude can’t – or won’t – do.
You see, in this arena, McConaughey is able to play complicated, non-heroic characters – and that excites him. He revealed: “A lot of the roles have been anti-heroes. There are some anti-heroes from the Dallas Buyers Club to Mud. These dreamers who aren’t of this Earth. The anti-hero is something I would say is pretty consistent. And the movies are all pretty good!”
