Matthew McConaughey was not always sure his place was in Hollywood.
Back when the star was best known for his romantic comedies like "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and "The Wedding Planner," he said he decided to take a break to rethink his career.
"I’ve usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag," the 54-year-old told "Twisters" star Glen Powell for an article in Interview magazine. "When I had my rom-com years, there was only so much bandwidth I could give to those, and those were some solid hits for me. But I wanted to try some other stuff. Of course, I wasn’t getting it, so I had to leave Hollywood for two years."
McConaughey said the break was "scary," and he considered leaving acting altogether and starting over again in a completely different career.
"I had long talks with my wife about needing to find a new vocation," he explained. "‘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 married wife Camilla Alves in 2012, and they share three children together.
The "Dallas Buyers Club" actor said he "honestly thought, ‘I stepped out of Hollywood. I got out of my lane.’ The lane Hollywood said I should stay in, and Hollywood’s like, ‘Well, f--- you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later.’"
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, CAMILA ALVES LOVE 'THE LACK OF DRAMA’ SINCE LEAVING CALIFORNIA FOR TEXAS
He said, although the time off gave him a feeling of "insignificance," he knew that was what he needed to do, "so I wasn’t going to pull the parachute and quit the mission I was on. But it was scary, because I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of the desert."
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Powell agreed that even though there are "ghost stories" about actors who took a break from the industry and never found their way back, it is still good to let Hollywood "miss you."
McConaughey, a Texas native, likened it to "lean horse, long ride."
He explained, "I don’t know about you, but for me, going back to ‘A Time to Kill,’ after I first had a big success in a major studio picture and became famous, I remembered that the Thursday before that movie opened, there’s 100 scripts out there that I would’ve done, and 99 of them I could not book. Over that one weekend, 99 noes became 99 yeses. I was like, ‘What? Three days ago, I’d have done any of these! And now you’re asking me which one I want to do?’ It was a hell of a shocking thing."
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McConaughey said he then grabbed a backpack and headed off to Peru for three weeks, so he could "hear myself think."
His last rom-com role was in 2009's "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," and by 2011, he was starring in "The Lincoln Lawyer." In 2014, he won his first Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club."
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Earlier in the interview, McConaughey professed, "Once I felt like I was in Hollywood, I felt comfortable enough to go back home. You can really be an honest observer of humans in Texas. It’s tough to do that in Hollywood, because everyone’s a voyeur. Instead of going someplace to eat, a lot of Hollywood’s going to that place to see who’s coming to that place to eat."
