Matthew Lillard insists he doesn’t “think anyone really likes” him as an actor.
Matthew Lillard thinks his career resurgence is more about nostalgia than people actually liking him.
The 56-year-old actor rose to fame as Stu Macher in 1996’s Scream before playing Shaggy in 2002’s Scooby-Doo and its sequel Monsters Unleashed two years later, while he has found a new fanbase since playing William Afton in Five Nights At Freddy’s in 2023, going onto appear in The Life of Chuck and Daredevil: Born Again.
Speaking to the Phase Hero podcast, he said: “Scooby-Doo 1 and 2 are more popular now than they ever were when they came out.
“So I do think there’s a weird nostalgia thing happening in our industry and in the zeitgeist because I think that people are longing for ye olde times.
“I think that’s one of the reasons I’m having this moment to be honest, is because I was identified in that moment, so people are hiring me again.”
He argued that people “miss the old times” rather than him as an actor.
He laughed: “I think that’s why I’m working. I don’t think anyone really likes me. They just miss the old times.”
Back in 2024, he admitted he thought the Scooby-Doo live action movies would land him “on the call sheet for the next 10 years of movies”, but the sequel’s box office flop meant “the exact opposite happened”.
He told Business Insider: “I’ve gone through good patches and bad patches. I’ve been irrelevant and thought I was never going to work again.”
Matthew recently thanked fans for their support after he was blated by Quentin Tarantino.
The iconic filmmaker shared his list of the best movies of the 21st century, and ranked There Will Be Blood at number five, observing that it “would stand a better chance to be in number one or number two if it didn’t have a big giant flaw in it”.
He told The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast: “And the flaw is Paul Dano. Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander, and it’s also so drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander … He is weak sauce, man. He’s a weak sister.”
Tarantino subsequently aimed some criticism at Owen Wilson and Matthew.
He added: “I’m not saying he’s giving a terrible performance. I’m saying he’s giving a non-entity [performance]. I don’t care for him. I don’t care for Owen Wilson, I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
The film world rallied behind Matthew, who described the fallout to dying and being “in heaven watching everyone send out their RIP tweets”.
He told PEOPLE magazine: “I mean, it was really being a part of your own wake, sort of sitting there living through all the nice things people say after you die.
“So it was really, really lovely. It was something that happened that was, who cares, really?
“But I spoke out. I mean, I got caught on a hot mic talking about it, and then it sort of went viral from there.”
Matthew Lillard thinks people ‘miss the old times’ more than they like his acting
