Matthew McConaughey Talks Non-Exclusively To TBI Editor
By: Marla Bishop
Tags: Self Improvement, The Bad Influence, Actors, Life, Matthew McConaughey

Then, the wonder of wonders, a new series entitled ‘Spark’ launched on the same meditation app, and who should pop up talking about living with intention? Yup, Matthew McConaughey.

Cynics might view the interview as a plug for his new memoir, Greenlights, but even if it is, it provides a great insight into the power of holding out for what you want.

He talks about being really intrigued and big on the dance between the responsibility of freedom and the freedom in responsibility. Although some people see those as contradictions, he doesn’t believe they are.

“I’ve taken a lot of responsibility for my freedom…(by using) delayed gratification.” This, he says we can do by ‘leaning into’ the right kind of resistance, which is about staying with the uncomfortable situation, even if we feel sad, lonely or lost. “Sometimes we can outlast the pain and discomfort, and it’s good for us.”

He also takes creative visualization seriously and talks about writing down where you want to go as a headline, “Write where it is you want to go, in the future. Go as far out as you can think. Then try and live the story that leads to that headline.”

I love his notion of always chasing goals and getting “comfortable with understanding that we never arrive at yet, but we can constantly achieve on the way to yet, on the way to achieving the unachievable… That’s the deal, that’s the game, that’s the fun, that’s as good as it gets.”

He speaks about coming to the realization that he’d been typecast as a romantic comedy actor (Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, The Wedding Planner, Failure To Launch, Fifty Ways To Lose A Guy,) but he wanted to break out and win parts in more serious films.

“I noticed after four or five of them, every rom-com looked like I could do them tomorrow morning… I wanted to find roles where I could have a real experience in the making of it.”

But would the industry allow him to break free of the mold? No way.

“Nobody wants to do any of those dramas with romcom shirtless McConahauey. So I decided that if I couldn’t do what I want to do, I’m going to stop doing what I’ve been doing.”

He told his agent, no more romcoms, and sat back to wait for the roles he now really wanted. But nothing but romcoms came his way. The crunch came when, six months down the line, he was offered $5m for a part in yet another romantic comedy. He turned it down. Undaunted, the producers came back with bigger and wilder amounts of money.

Eventually, they offered him a cool $14.5m. Matthew admits the script looked a lot better to him than it had done at $5m. But he stood his ground. And turned it down.

“When I said no to that, I think that sent a message to Hollywood that McConaughey is not bluffing. No more romcoms.”

Fourteen months went by, with no offers coming in. He started to wonder if he’d ever work as an actor again, and to consider other careers.

While he doesn’t share exactly which words he used when speaking to himself during the twenty months he was waiting to transition from rom-com actor to roles he wanted, I imagine they went something like this:

“You turned down 14.5m bucks because you no longer want to be known as the guy who goes shirtless in romcoms? I mean, what the hell’s the matter with you man?”

Well, those were probably his agent's words anyway.

The fact is, money isn’t everything, especially when you've already got more than enough to last the rest of your natural life and provide for your offspring and their descendants.

“I noticed there were choices I made in my life that engineered green lights for me in the future; responsibilities I took that gave me more Saturdays… that gave me more ease, because I made the choice in the present time to tee myself up. I also noticed that sometimes green lights just fell in my lap, I just got lucky.”

Eventually, the tide did turn, and offers for the kind of films he wanted to do started to come in.

“All of a sudden, Matthew McConahauey becomes a new, novel, good ideas for films like Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, Bernie, Killer Joe, True Detective… Those offers came and they were exactly what I wanted to do and I remember saying ‘fuck the bucks, I’m going for the experience.’ I’ve been dry and out of work for twenty months and now just what I want to eat is right in front of me and I ferociously went after them. I had a wonderful run of back to back films that I wanted and were incredibly enriching for me to make.”

His advice to those who want to make changes in their lives is simple:

“If you don’t know how to rebrand, unbrand first…. By process of elimination, get rid of the things in your life that do not feed who you want to become or what you want to do, and you’ll have more chance of becoming who you really want to be. If you can’t rebrand immediately, press pause, step away.”

He’s a living testament to the belief that you can create the life you really want if you hold out for it.

In the times he finds life tough, he challenges himself to take a greater perspective on life. He talks about lengthening the view from not just this week, this month, but to the next ten years, our whole lives, and beyond that.