Matthew McConaughey on the power of ‘no’

Matthew McConaughey says it took turning down a $14.5 million payday for Hollywood to take him seriously in dramatic roles.

The actor appeared on tennis pro Nick Kyrgios‘ Good Trouble podcast and revealed he left Hollywood for Texas because he kept getting scripts for romantic comedies. 

After a string of successful ones, like How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days and The Wedding Planner, he wanted more.

“When I was rolling with the rom-coms, and I was the ‘rom-com dude,’ that was my lane and I liked that lane. That lane paid well … I was so strong in that lane that anything outside that lane – dramas and stuff that I want[ed] to do … Hollywood said, ‘No, no, no. You should stay there.'”

He added, “So, since I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I … moved down to the ranch in Texas.”

He reportedly told his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, “I’m not going back to work unless I get offered roles I want to do.”

The actor and author says he stuck to his guns even after studios sweetened the deal with a potential paycheck as high as $14.5 million. “That was probably seen as the most rebellious move in Hollywood by me because it really sent the signal, ‘He ain’t f****** bluffing,'” McConaughey recalled, noting the gambit worked.

He insists, “The devil’s in the infinite yeses, not the no’s. ‘No’ becomes more important than ‘yes.'”

McConaughey says N-O is even more important if you’ve become successful. “We can all look around and see we’ve over-leveraged our life with yeses and going, ‘I’m making C-minuses and all this s*** in my life because I said yes to too many things.'”