Matthew McConaughey, Getting Serious Again
The actor says the transition from romantic comedies to more serious movies — other notable performances have come in The Lincoln Lawyer and Killer Joe — hasn't been as planned as it might appear from the outside. He had decided to take a break from lighter parts, but he wasn't actively pursuing other kinds of roles.
"These roles — these last six films I've done — they came to me; I didn't go out and chase them," he says. "[W]hat I had in my life at that time was something really special, which allowed me to take a pause and back away and not do the romantic comedies, or not do the other scripts that were coming in. I had a son.
"So I said, 'I'm going to be a father for a while. I'm not going to rush into work. Let the work come find me.' ... So I was able to be very patient and, what happened is, I got the call from Billy Friedkin [about the part of a cop moonlighting as a murderer in Killer Joe], and then Richard Linklater came to me with the Bernie script. And I got the call from Soderbergh [for the strip-club-emcee role in Magic Mike], and then Lee Daniels gave me a call on Paperboy and then Jeff Nichols came. So they came to me — and that was just really one of those wonderful ways the world works."