This week “The Dallas Buyers Club” opens (you can read our review here), and it features a riveting, committed, physically gruelling and very likely-to-be-Oscar-nominated performance by Matthew McConaughey. If he is nominated, however, McConaughey will be at least a little in debt to the buzz that’s surrounded him of late as the newest member of what we could call the Comeback Club—that rarefied group of people who have, sometimes on a dime, turned their movie careers around and breathed new life into what was once moribund. It takes a great deal of luck to pull off this trickiest of acts, and for every actor who’s managed to hang onto their newly regained spot on top of the pile for a few years, there are ten who’ve briefly clambered all the way up only to topple off again a moment later. McConaughey’s recent string of impressive performances in critically acclaimed films (more on him below) is long enough to make us think that his career resurrection will have the staying power that many don’t, but only time can tell on that one.
Still it’s a fascinating phenomenon, the Hollywood second chance. For an industry so notoriously fickle and frequently cruel, there’s a kind of odd sentimentality at play when an actor beats the odds and stages a comeback. So here are twelve examples of actors who did just that—no matter how long their renaissances lasted, they can all give us a glimmer of hope: however definitively you may think your career has flamed out, poke around in the ashes a bit and you may just find a phoenix.
Matthew McConaughey
How Bad Did Things Get And Why? McConaughey never really had a serious dry spell, but he certainly went a long time without being treated like a serious actor. For the decade following his attention-getting lead role debut in 1996’s potboiler “A Time To Kill,” he mostly paid the bills with smaller roles in bigger pictures, bigger roles in bigger pictures that underperformed (“Reign of Fire,” “Sahara“) and thankless romantic comedies like “Failure To Launch” and “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.” But even that last well began to dry up, and his crowd-pleasing roles in “Fool’s Gold” and “The Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past” failed to please many crowds and showed a star in decline. By 2010, McConaughey was a leading man without a real showcase, one who had not garnered any major award nominations during his entire career, and who had already torpedoed a franchise with “Sahara.” In this industry, you can go from bankable to toxic real quick.
What Turned it Around? While not a major hit (and not nearly the franchise-starter all involved had hoped for), “The Lincoln Lawyer” showed that McConaughey was smart enough to play to his strengths: get in a suit, get serious and get busy. That was only the first of an avalanche of roles that were coming, all of which ignored his considerable good looks and usual asking price. Gone was the vanity that came from being a big star, as he popped up in low budget ensembles like “Bernie” and “Killer Joe,” showing an unexpected range and diversity that got him noticed by producers who had maybe written him off as a failed pretty-boy. Suddenly, “a Matthew McConaughey movie” was no longer something to fear.
How Well Has He Fared Since? McConaughey has only begun to build on his strong couple of years. He just missed out on his first Oscar nomination last year for “Magic Mike,” but is likely to get it this year with “The Dallas Buyers Club,” a long-time passion project. Beyond that, the future’s even brighter—he’s scored a role in the lead for the upcoming HBO series “True Detective” and has a showy supporting role in Martin Scorsese‘s “The Wolf Of Wall Street.” McConaughey’s visibility and industry rep have never been stronger, and that’s before he’s seen in the lead of Chris Nolan‘s next film “Interstellar.” Looking at the next year of McConaughey, it’s impossible to not tilt back your head and drawl, “Alright, alright, alright.”
What Has He Got To Say About It? “I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.”
Harvey Keitel
How Bad Did Things Get And Why? Things got pretty bad for Keitel, career-wise, with the majority of the 80s being something of a black hole. It’s not that he didn’t work, but the paycheck gigs he got were often in risible films that simply typecast him as a one-dimensional hoodlum. It was hardly fitting for a man who’d risen to prominence with his Scorsese pictures in the 1970s, and who had only just, it seemed, really cemented his bid for leading man status by starring in “Fingers,” in which he turned in one of the most impressive performances of his career, one that totally elevates the film. But after being replaced by Francis Ford Coppola on “Apocalypse Now” with Martin Sheen, due apparently to Keitel’s inability to “play [the character as] a passive onlooker,” Keitel’s prospects seemed to take a nosedive, and just a couple of years later he was appearing in “Saturn 3,” a turgid sci-fi mess (or hilarious sci-fi mess, depending on your capacity for ironic enjoyment) in which Keitel suffered the further indignity of being dubbed throughout by Roy Dotrice. Still, everything old is new again and the film’s attained enough cult status over the years (partly due to dialogue like “You have a great body. May I use it?”) to warrant a Blu-Ray release on December 3rd.
What Turned it Around? As much as we could have packed this list with actors that Tarantino “rescued” in “Pulp Fiction” and subsequent films, the first and still possibly most deserved comeback that he had a hand in was that of Keitel in “Reservoir Dogs.” Of course, Tarantino hardly knew that it was going to be the massive hit it was, and famously believed that the part of Mr. White was going to end up being played by his uncle or something. Let’s also not forget that in the years just prior, Keitel’s wilderness period had seemed to end anyway, yielding him supporting roles in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Thelma and Louise” and even his sole Oscar nomination for “Bugsy.” Initially it may have seemed like he was doing Tarantino the favor, but in Mr. White, he got a rare role that absolutely played to his strengths and also put him front and center of a strong ensemble, and at the heart of a hip new filmmaking sensibility that was going to take the world by storm.
How Well Has He Fared Since? Keitel immediately followed “Reservoir Dogs” with another showstoppingly brutal, tortured turn in Abel Ferrera’s “Bad Lieutenant” and an unexpectedly moving role in Jane Campion’s period drama “The Piano,” making this segment of his career a second pinnacle with regard to critical acclaim. And the rest of the 90s were pretty good to him too, with “Pulp Fiction,” obviously, but also strong performances in indies “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face” as well as underrated films like “Cop Land” and “Clockers” dotting his resume. Since then, though, meaty roles have been fewer and farther between, and while the 00s are hardly comparable to the 80s in terms of fallow-ness, here’s hoping we get something more than the odd Wes Anderson cameo and a recurring “National Treasure” role from him soon.
What Has He Got To Say About It? “I work hard on everything I do. Everything is a struggle, everything is hard, everything is difficult. I don’t care if it’s a one-line walk-on, or a lead in a movie, I work with the same intensity on the craft, on the creation, on the preparation.”