Matthew Lillard got brutally honest about his love-hate relationship with the “Scooby-Doo” movies while participating in Variety’s “Know Their Lines” video series. The actor expected to become a blockbuster movie star after landing the role of Shaggy in 2002’s live-action “Scooby-Doo,” which earned $275 million worldwide. But the franchise was short-lived after 2004’s “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” disappointed and cut Lillard’s blockbuster dreams short.
And then I felt that ‘Scooby Doo’ is this big movie, I’m now going to go off and be a big movie star. And it was right about this time, after the second movie, that my career took a real nosedive for a long time. Like, I may be one of those guys from the ’90s that never comes back.
This movie is a love-hate relationship for me because I was like, ‘It’s “Scooby Do’s” fault. That’s why I’m not working.'” “I resented ‘Scooby-Doo’ for a long time, but I never regretted doing it because the reality is that if I didn’t have the money I made in the second film, I wouldn’t have made it through,” he continued. We eventually [did sell a lot].
We sold our cars, we sold our house. We basically downsized our lives so that we could live in a very affordable way. And my wife went back to work, and that was a real pivotal moment for me as well.
Like I felt like before this movie, ‘I’m doing all these movies and I’m a big guy.’ The reality was I’m not. I was always a character actor, and I thought I was more than that. There was like a real humbling of Matthew Lillard that happens right after this movie that now I’m so grateful for.” Lillard earned the biggest payday of his career for starring in the “Scooby-Doo” sequel.
He told Business Insider last year that he expected the sequel to be a huge success and catapult him into becoming No. 1 on the call sheet for the next decade of his career, but then the opposite the happened and he couldn’t find any work as a leading man. A change in thinking allowed Lillard to breakthrough in ways he was not expecting. While he continued to voice Shaggy in various animated “Scooby-Doo” films, he also won supporting roles in films like the Oscar-winning “The Descendants” and Clint Eastwood’s “Trouble With the Curve.” Watch Lillard’s full Variety video interview in the post below.
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