Matthew McConaughey has revealed he once spent two days alone in the desert reading 20 years’ worth of bad reviews of his work.
The Hollywood actor made the confession on the podcast Build or Break, where he was asked about criticism.
‘I read every one,’ McConaughey said.
‘I sat with them – I spent two days looking. It was hard.’
The actor said he had ‘collected 20 years’ of negative write-ups before heading off. He explained that he ‘went away to the desert for a weekend and took them all in this thick book’.
McConaughey, who is 56, did not appear to be joking. He spoke on the podcast wearing tinted sunglasses indoors and a hat that one observer thought belonged on reality television.
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The stunt is an unusual one for a film star. Most people, after all, would rather avoid reading a single savaging, let alone two decades of them bound into one volume.
McConaughey’s account suggests he saw the exercise as a test of nerve rather than a punishment. He did not skim, and he did not pick out the kind ones. He read the lot.
It is not clear from his comments who put the book together, or exactly how long each review was studied. What he did make plain is that the experience was a tough one.
The story has since been picked up by The Guardian, where a columnist said they loved every detail of it, from the desert setting to the length of the retreat and the sheer commitment involved.
The columnist described the image of a famous actor hunkered down in a barren landscape, poring over his harshest critics, as a welcome distraction from the news agenda.
The same piece wondered whether McConaughey had printed and pasted the reviews together himself or handed the job to an assistant. It also joked that the column itself would not make it into any future edition.
The columnist awarded the actor ten out of ten for the idea, adding: ‘no notes’.
McConaughey’s admission has landed as a rare moment of openness from a star about the part of the job most of them prefer to ignore. Actors are routinely judged in public, and the reviews can be brutal.
Few, though, go quite as far as taking a whole weekend to sit with them in the middle of nowhere.
The Guardian’s column on the actor’s desert retreat was published on October 25.
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