Matthew Lillard Was Convinced He’d Never Win an Oscar if He Signed up for ‘DWTS’

There’s a reason Matthew Lilliard has steered clear of putting on his dancing shoes for a stint on Dancing with the Stars.

The actor, 54, told Business Insider in a recent interview that when his movie Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed unexpectedly flopped at the box office in 2004, the opportunity arose to appear on the reality show.

“I was going to do Dancing with the Stars. And I was like, if I do Dancing with the Stars, I’ll never win an Academy Award,” Lillard said. “If I do Dancing With the Stars, I’ll be famous and not a great actor, and I really just wanted to be a great actor.”

Lillard, who played Shaggy in the Scooby Doo films, thought the role was putting him on a solid trajectory to achieve massive fame.

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Scooby-Doo brought new life to Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang nearly four decades after fans were first introduced to the beloved cartoon Scooby-Doo Where Are You! The film, which starred Matthew Lillard (Shaggy), Linda Cardellini (Velma), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Fred) and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Daphne), stayed true to the cartoon in many ways, especially […]

“I thought I’d be No. 1 on the call sheet for the next 10 years of movies,” Lillard said. “And the reality was, the exact opposite happened.”

In the interview, Lillard recalled that at the time he was desperate to achieve career success and went through ups and downs along the way.

“I was caught up in the parts I was getting, I was caught up in this drive to be quote-unquote famous,” he admitted. “I’ve gone through good patches and bad patches. I’ve been irrelevant and thought I was never going to work again.”

 Lillard has previously been open about the pitfalls of working in the acting industry, sharing his candid thoughts with Us Weekly in June 2022.

“I don’t think a lot of working-class actors talk about how hard it is to survive from job to job. I’ve built my life in such a way that I can endure the ebbs and flows of this industry,” he told Us. “But for me, it’s really trying to find a series of roles or as I get older and grow into sort of a more, obviously a character part. I think I’ve always been a character actor, but as you get older, not a lot of leads in movies are 50-year-old character actors. The Brian Cranstons of the world, those roles out there that you sort of define your career late in your career or late in your journey is something that I think every actor holds out hope for — male or female.

Related: Stars Who Have Considered Quitting Acting

Most people have thought about giving up their jobs at one time or another — including some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. During a 2019 interview with Australian Men’s Health, Chris Hemsworth admitted that he considered leaving acting behind after his role in 2009’s Star Trek sparked fewer opportunities than he’d hoped. “I was about to […]

He continued: “You just get these moments sometimes where you get to really act. So much of it is coming in and playing a small role here, or a small role there. … And those are great. Like, that’s how you feed your family. But you’re always looking for something that’s gonna push you as an actor. And when you read it on the page, you go, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know if I can pull it off.’ … As an actor, as a man, as a human being, those are the moments you’re proud of. So you just want to be proud of your work.”

Lillard also reflected on his earlier years in the industry working as an actor and shared an insight into the insecurities that come with that.

“I look back at all my life and these moments where I was such a cute boy and I was like, I always felt super insecure. I think at the end of the day, I always felt like I was not enough in so many ways,” he confessed. “I just think that there’s so many actors out there, you know, there’s so much fear in this industry. There’s so much fear that you’re not cute enough. You’re not talented enough. You’re not sexy enough. And I just think none of that fear serves you.”