Matthew Lillard is looking back at a very tough time in his career.
While participating in Variety‘s “Know Their Lines” video series, the 56-year-old actor admitted that he has a love-hate with the Scooby-Doo movies after the sequel flopped.
Matthew was expected to become a big blockbuster star after landing the role as Shaggy in 2002’s live-action Scooby-Doo movie, which earned $275 million worldwide. However, the franchise was cut short when the 2004 sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed flopped, which had a negative effect on Matthew‘s career.
“I felt a ton of pressure to not suck,” Matthew said about first landing the role of Shaggy. “It was the first big movie that I was in and it was a big opportunity for me. And then I felt that Scooby-Doo is this big movie, I’m now going to go off and be a big movie star.”
Matthew starred in the Scooby-Doo movies alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr, and Linda Cardellini.
“And it was right about this time, after the second movie, that my career took a real nosedive for a long time,” he explained. “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-Doo’s fault. That’s why I’m not working.’”
Matthew continued, “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.”
After not landing roles after the sequel flopped, Matthew and wife Heather Helm faced a lot of financial hardships.
“My wife and I would have had to sell everything. We eventually [did sell a lot],” he shared. “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,” he admitted. “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.”
In another recent interview, Matthew explained why he now feels “ashamed” about returning for Scream 7.
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