Matthew McConaughey: I shed many a tear with this choice.
It was scary.
And trust me, my family, my brothers,
mother and everybody,
thought I was out of my freaking mind.
I was leading a successful life as an actor.
I was the go-to rom-com guy.
I liked doing rom-coms.
They paid well.
But I remember noticing at that time
that my life was getting very deep.
I had found the love of my life in Camila ...
we had a newborn coming.
I had more joy. I had more sadness.
The extremes — the ceilings and the basement
of my own emotions of my life —
had more depth and more height to them.
So my work, I felt, like, "Oh, I've got to kind of compress that with these rom-coms."
But I still said, "Boy, I'd sure like to do some work
that challenges the vitality that I'm feeling in my life."
And that work — dramas — were not being offered to me.
And so I talked to my wife, I talked to my agent,
and I talked to my business manager.
I said, "Look, I may not work for awhile."
I was in a position where I had saved my money and been frugal with it,
'cause I'm not going to do the films I've been doing.
At the same time, my mom was having trouble
seeing the line of privacy with my life
and the fact that other people would love to know some of that information
and might be wanting to use it against me.
And the last place I wanted to have a leak is from my mother.
And so I tried it out, and she leaked a few. Then I was, like,
"I just can't share this stuff anymore."
And that led to many years of us just not really talking or getting very personal.
So I go on this sabbatical ... away from Hollywood.
I have to say no to every rom-com script that comes in to me.
I even turn one down for 14 and a half million dollars.
And when the word got around Hollywood that I did that,
I think part of Hollywood said,
"Oh, all right, McConaughey's not bluffing.
OK.
Quit sending him romantic comedies.
He's really not doing them."
Then nothing came in for over a year,
almost a year and a half,
and I was now shaking hands with the fact that
I may never work in Hollywood again.
And then as life happens ...
"Rrrrring ... Hello?"
"The Lincoln Lawyer."
"Killer Joe."
"Mud."
"Bernie."
"Magic Mike."
"True Detective."
"Dallas Buyers Club."
All the things that I wanted just came to me,
and I just said, "OK, here we go."
After I got stable enough with my success
and understood where I was and who I was,
it was, like, OK, I'm going to take the reins off Mom. I'm going to let her go.
And so, she put on her short, short leather skirts.
She started hitting the red carpet,
and I was, like, "You go, girl. Go get them.
Say whatever you want. Any stories on limits. Go for it."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you to the academy for this."
If there's anything I would tell my 15-year-old self —
and I'm told that I've taken a lot of risks —
I would say, "Take more."
When we're embarrassed to fail,
when we don't want to fail because the world looks at us
and goes, "Nana-nana, boo-boo."
I say, you know what?
Far as I can tell, those people that go "nana-nana boo-boo"
when you fall down and fail,
they're on the sidelines for a reason.
They're on the sidelines.
To that, I say, "All right, all right, all right.
Just keep living.
Thank you."