Matthew McConaughey’s Brothers Slammed Him for Quitting Rom-Coms and Said: ‘What Is Your Major Mal-F—ing-Function? What Are You Thinking?

According To The variety Matthew McConaughey recently said in an interview with The Guardian that his brothers called him out when he made the decision to stop acting in romantic-comedies and take a break from Hollywood until he started getting more dramatic roles. The Oscar winner has long been candid about his desire to leave the rom-com genre behind, revealing in his 2020 memoir that he even turned down a $14.5 million offer to return to the genre that made him a star. “I was good at something I wasn’t loving,” McConaughey now told The Guardian about his decision. “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.’ But I was like, ‘I want to go for it, 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.’” “My brothers were like: ‘Little brother, what is your major mal-fucking-function? What are you thinking?’” he continued. “And I was like: ‘No, this is clear to me and [wife Camila Alves], we’re going to do this. We’re not going to pull parachute. We’re gonna ride this.’ And 20 months later, the levee broke and the offers came in that I wanted.” McConaughey was a rom-con icon in the early 2000s with films like “The Wedding Planner,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Failure To Launch,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” all surpassing or coming close to the $100 million mark at the worldwide box office. He said on the “Good Trouble” podcast last year that he physically abandoned Hollywood and moved his family to Texas when the industry refused to let him branch out of the genre. “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, and it was working,” McConaughey said at the time. “I was so strong in that lane that anything outside that lane – dramas and stuff that I want[ed] to do – were like, ‘No, no, no. No, McConaughey.’ Hollywood said, ’No, no, no. You should stay there.’ So, since I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I stopped doing what I was doing, and I moved down to the ranch in Texas.” After McConaughey relocated with his family to Texas, he made a pact with his wife and said: “I’m not going back to work unless I get offered roles I want to do.” McConaughey said in an Interview magazine discussion around the same time that “it was scary” to leave Hollywood while his career was so successful. He even thought that moving to Texas would mean he would need to find a new job. “I think I’m going to teach high school classes. I think I’m going to study to be a conductor. I think I’m going to go be a wildlife guide,” the actor said, adding that his decision to turn down a $14.5 million rom-com offer is what told Hollywood he was not messing around. “That was probably seen as the most rebellious move in Hollywood by me because it really sent the signal, ‘He ain’t fucking bluffing.’” Fortunately for McConaughey, Hollywood listened and offers for roles in movies such as “Mud,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Interstellar” and “True Detective” ultimately came in and altered the course of his career. He won the best actor Oscar for “Dallas Buyers Club.”