Noted actor Matthew McConaughey rose to fame through his work in romantic comedies like The Wedding Planner (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Failure to Launch (2006), and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), among other films. But he "wasn't loving" all the films in the genre despite gaining media attention and success through them.
Opening up on why he decided to quit working in rom-coms, he said, "I was good at something I wasn't loving. I was never looking in the mirror going, 'My life's more vital than my work, oh I wish my work was as vital as my life.' I remember going, 'Well good luck, because if it's got to be one way or the other, good on you that you feel your life's more vital than your work and that it's not the other way around."
At that point in time, McConaughey wanted projects that challenge him and gives an experience that makes him feel "alive". He said in an interview with People, "I want to see if my work can be an experience for me that is so vital and alive that it challenges the vitality I'm having in my own life."
While his wife Camila Alves supported the decision wholeheartedly, his other relatives did not. He recalls his brothers asking "What were you thinking?". "I told them, 'No, this is clear to me and Camila, we're going to do this. We're not going to pull parachute. We're gonna ride this'," he said, adding that he and his wife made a pact that he wasn't going to go back to work until he got the roles he wanted to work on.
However, the road to his journey was not easy. McConaughey took over a year-long break from Hollywood until he started getting more dramatic roles. The actor mentioned how "scary" it was to leave his job when his career was at a peak. In his memoir that he published in 2020, he even revealed rejecting a $14.5 million offer to return to the genre. "That was probably seen as the most rebellious move in Hollywood by me because it really sent the signal, ‘He ain’t fucking bluffing’," he said.
Fortunately, offers came back and he received award nominations for Mud (2012), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), HBO's True Detective (2014) and also starred in Interstellar that year. He won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, and this era of his career became known as the 'McConaissance'.
