Featured Image Credit: Focus Features
Topics: Matthew McConaughey, TV and Film, Money
Emily Puckering
Even though Matthew McConaughey is one of the most admired and successful actors in Hollywood, it turns out that one of his most impactful roles came with a rather slim paycheque.
Well, a slim paycheque in the showbiz world, anyway!
While we all know and love McConaughey for his roles in rom-coms like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, sci-fi epics like Interstellar, and even his iconic appearance in The Wolf of Wall Street, it can be argued that one of his most impressive jobs was leading the 2013 biopic Dallas Buyers Club.
Dropping nearly 3st 7lb for the role, McConaughey, now 55, transformed into Ron Woodroof, a cowboy diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-1980s.
Despite being given just weeks to live upon his diagnosis, Woodroof smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas to treat his symptoms and ended up living for a further seven years, helping thousands of others who had also been diagnosed with the devastating disease.
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Dallas Buyers Club approached the hard-hitting truth of the AIDs pandemic, especially the misinformation and judgement that was spread during this time period and won McConaughey his first ever Academy Award for Best Actor.
Despite all of this, the actor was not paid the big bucks.
Instead, he was paid just under $200,000, according to sources cited by The Hollywood Reporter. But why was this?
Well, back in 2008, the actor had actually received an offer of $15 million to star in Universal and Imagine’s big-screen take on Magnum, P.I.
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However, he would turn this offer down.
Instead of jumping at the big paycheque, he opted for a smaller project instead that would go on to become Dallas Buyers Club.
This was off the back of previous projects - including Sahara and Fool's Gold - neither of which performed well in the box office. This came in comparison to his $170 million rom-com How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Speaking on the Modern Wisdom podcast, McConaughey explained why he skipped out on the big fee role in favour for something that paid significantly less.
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He said he'd rather make a 'profit' in his life instead of his bank account.
Don't get him wrong now, he does 'love money' and said he's 'all for it', but he's not about 'chasing the dollar' if a more fulfilling project is on the table.
He'd raked in some big paycheques from starring in a series of rom-coms, as while he 'enjoyed them' he told The Guardian he decided to sit out a few lucrative job offers and in his own words 'was looking for something to be turned on by'.
Along came Dallas Buyers Club, which at $200,000 wasn't going to be the most financially lucrative job of his career, but would lead to work which he found more fulfilling in his life.
Not a bad deal if you can get it.
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Additional words by Joe Harker.