Everyone knows that sinking feeling in your stomach when someone is criticizing you. Whether it's your boss, your partner, or even your kids, it's never a nice feeling.
Well, now imagine that you're a legendary actor. Being in the limelight brings you a lot of positives, but one thing that's often difficult to swallow is all the darn criticism!
Well, Matthew McConaughey of Interstellar fame recently revealed a wild way that he combatted that feeling. As reported by People, he opened up about how on an episode of the Build Or Break podcast with Daniel Lubetzky.
Lubetzky asked the legendary actor about his self-worth, emphasising the criticism that he receives and how he makes sure that doesn't affect it.
McConaughey revealed that he once took 20 years of bad reviews "in this big thick book" on a trip "to the desert for a week". His conclusion? "The ones who wrote the good reviews were the smart ones."
The legendary actor explained, "I read every one. All the negative reviews - I'm sorry, not all the positive reviews, the negative ones. And I sat, and it's all I [did], I spent two days with them."
Videos by Wide Open Country
It Was Quite Difficult for the Legendary Actor
The actor revealed, "It was hard". That tracks - having every negative thing ever said about you all in one place must sting pretty bad.
But the whole thing gave him some pretty valuable insights. "Some of the reviews, what I learned," he explained, "is that from the very first sentence, 'Oh, this person has it out for me.' It didn't matter whether they saw the movie or not. They just don't like me, they were going to write a negative review."
However, he found that other reviewers had some genuine things to say - and he appreciated that side of the criticism. "Other reviews I saw, I was like, 'This person's got a point.'"
"'They're actually a fan of mine, and they didn't get from my performance what I was actually hoping they would have got. Where did I fail in the choice?' Because this is constructive criticism," he explained.
Good on him for putting things into perspective like that!
