Matthew McConaughey will never forget the night he called his father and told him he wanted to be an actor.
“I didn’t go down the same path as my family,” McConaughey told CNN while promoting his new movie, “Gold.” “I was headed towards law school … and I remember being very nervous on the night when I called [my dad] my sophomore year of college to tell him I wanted to change my course direction to go to film school. I really thought he was going to be ‘Not on my dime. Like hell you will.'”
But McConaughey’s father surprised him.
“He paused and I remember him saying, ‘Is that what you want to do?’ and I said ‘Yes, sir’ and he paused again and he said, ‘Well, don’t half a** it.’ And that was the end,” he said.
McConaughey’s latest role in the upcoming movie, “Gold” is about a man pursuing a dream. His own pursuit of an acting, McConaughey said, might have cost him some grades.
“I had to wear a pager in college…and I’d go, ‘If this pager goes off in the middle of class, I’m going to leave and I’m going to drive to Dallas,’ is where I would drive to go audition for some commercial or ad,” he said. “I remember going to [my teachers] and saying look, I’m doing something to try and get work after I get out of college, would you just give me a C if I miss too many classes? I’ll be there for the major test, just give me a C. I made a lot of C’s.”
“Gold” hits theaters January 27.
