Matthew McConaughey turned down $14.5 million paycheck to send clear message to Hollywood

Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey once rejected a mammoth paycheck to send a message across Hollywood.

Appearing in the new episode of Steven Bartlett's podcast The Diary of a CEO, the 55-year-old recounted a creatively fallow period in his career where he was pigeonholed as the romantic comedy dude.

After compelling turns in A Time to Kill, Contact and Steven Spielberg's Amistad, the film business cashed in on McConaughey's handsomeness by injecting him into consecutive couple-y titles like The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch and Ghosts of Girlfriend's Past.

Eventually, though, he wiped his hands of the rom-com schtick, even going as far as to turn down an eye-popping financial offer.

Matthew McConaughey pictured collecting his Best Actor Oscar (Adam Taylor/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

"I was getting quantity, but I wasn't getting the quality,” he told Bartlett, who also appears on the long-running reality series Dragons' Den.

"What I want to do is dramas, but Hollywood won't offer me one, no matter how big a pay cut I take. If I can't do what I want to do, I'm going to quit doing what I've been doing.

"[I] chose to, boom, go to the ranch in Texas. Told my agent, 'No more rom-coms.'"

Two years into digging his heels in - the offers really did dry up - McConaughey was presented with the chance to lead another action comedy.

"$8 million offer. I read it. I said, 'No, thank you, that's the stuff I'm not doing,'" he recalled. "They come back with a $10 million offer, 'I'm not reading that again, no thank you.' They come back with a $12 million offer, 'Guys, tell them I said no thanks'.

"They come back with a $14.5 million offer. I said, 'Let me read that again'," McConaughey laughed.

"I read it again, it's the same words that were in the $8 million offer I said no to, but it was better written."

Apparently, he 'could see' himself in the film but ultimately declined the studio's pile of cash.

His portrayal of Ron Woodroof changed everything in 2013 (Focus Features)

"I think that me saying no to that $14.5 million offer – a year into me leaving and saying 'no more rom-coms' – I think me doing that sent the message through Hollywood, 'Oh, McConaughey is not bluffing'.

"Something about that was like, 'Oh, he didn't just recede; he's got a plan, but he's stepped out of Hollywood. He's turned down 14.5? Oh, he's not for rent'," he continued.

Skip to 2011, and the more challenging acting parts came rolling in.

In that year alone, he appeared in Richard Linklater's Bernie, The Exorcist director William Friedkin's Killer Joe and The Lincoln Lawyer.

Between 2012 and 2019, McConaughey headlined coming-of-age drama Mud, Christopher Nolan's mind-melting Interstellar, True Detective season one, Dallas Buyers Club and Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, whilst also stealing various scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street.

"Would those have come if I'd never stepped out?" he asked Bartlett. "No. No. They wouldn't have."