Matthew McConaughey Says Dismissal Of Rom-Coms Is “Completely Unfair” Because They Can Be “Difficult” To Make

Before the McConaissance, there were movies like "The Wedding Planner," "Failure to Launch," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," "Fool’s Gold," and "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." These were the projects upon which an often shirtless Matthew McConaughey buttered his bread. But now that he’s dancing between prestige indies like Gus Van Sant‘s forthcoming "The Sea Of Trees" and Christopher Nolan‘s forthcoming "Interstellar," you might think McConaughey would scoff at those earlier efforts. You would be wrong. In fact, he defends him heartily in a new profile for GQ.

"These things aren’t easy," he says of rom-coms. "What’s hard is to make them look easy. Those kinds of movies are what they are. They get pooh-poohed by critics. They get pooh-poohed by actors themselves. And in a way I get it, but in other ways it’s completely unfair. There’s a buoyancy you need to make them work. I believe I gave them buoyancy. And some of the shoots were very difficult, with me trying to fight for the balls on the guy." Yes, McConaughey had to bring his certain brand of testosterone of those movies for fear of making those leads too wimpy.

"What’s a romantic comedy? Boy meets girl. They get together. Something happens. Girl takes off. Boy chases girl. They get back together. The end. A lot of times the male is somewhat emasculated, meaning he has to crawl back and say, ‘I’m nothing without you. If you don’t take me back, I’m nothing.’ And I was always like, ‘what girl wants that guy?’ " the actor said. "I’ve got no problem saying, ‘I’m sorry. You want to give this another shot?’ But I’ve got to come back with some integrity even if it’s on a moped with a veil on my head. Look, I’m happy if you think I ‘cruised through’ those. I did my work."