Before Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in 'Dallas Buyers Club,' and being unanimously praised for his work in HBO's 'True Detective,' the 44 year-old actor was a household name in the genre of romantic comedy.

Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey is proud of his romantic comedy movies

McConaughey's roles in such films as 'The Wedding Planner' (2000), 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' (2003) and 'Failure To Launch' (2006), may have not being the most complicated characters to portray, but he is adamant they were all still challenging.

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"These things aren't easy. What's hard is to make them look easy," he told GQ magazine for its November cover story. "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."

Furthermore, continually playing the same sort of role never phased McConaughey. "I've never had fears that I was stuck in one thing," he said. "I'm sure we're going to talk about the years when I was in romantic comedies and I was seen as the guy who was on the beach, running around shirtless. I did that. Damn right that was me."

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But after several years of dominating this specific genre, McConaughey realized he had to try and detach himself in order to land different kinds of roles.

Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey with his Oscar for Best Actor 

"I wasn't scared like, 'Oh God, I'm going to be stuck here.' But I was like, I understand at some point that that is in italics now," he explained. "So I said, 'You know what? I'm not going to be openly presenting that for a while. I'm going to un-brand.'"

However, one good thing about being on set of so many rom-com's was the holiday-type locations, the talented actor recalled. "I did 'Fool's Gold' in Australia, had a summer in Malibu, and made a surfer film, basically, when you edit those altogether, it was one continuous 90-degree day on the beach without a shirt," he said.