Key Takeaways
- • Matthew McConaughey, who holds an Oscar and an estimated $200 million net worth, spent a weekend in the West Texas desert near Marfa reading a compiled "thick book" of 20 years of negative reviews, according to Fortune and a Build or Break podcast interview.
- • McConaughey said he spent two days reviewing the criticism and distinguished between reviewers who had "it out for me" regardless of the film and critics whose feedback was constructive and useful.
- • McConaughey's team dated the trip to around 2018 or 2019, while he was writing the memoir Greenlights, roughly two decades into a career that began with his 1993 breakout in Dazed and Confused.
- • Other high-profile executives and performers cited in the piece, including Jason Bateman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet, also describe rigorous approaches to feedback.
- • Maven CEO Gagan Biyani now gives candidates live critiques in job interviews, calling the response the "most telling part" of the hiring process.
Summary
Matthew McConaughey, who has an Oscar and an estimated $200 million net worth, collected what he considered the worst reviews written about him over roughly 20 years of his career and read them over a weekend in the West Texas desert near Marfa. In a recent interview with the Build or Break podcast, he said he took the negative reviews "as a thick book" and spent two days with them, describing the exercise as hard. According to McConaughey's team, as reported by Fortune, the trip took place around 2018 or 2019, while he was writing Greenlights, by which point he had been working in the industry for more than two decades, since his 1993 breakout in Dazed and Confused.
McConaughey said the exercise revealed two categories of critics. Some reviews, he said, showed a bias from the first sentence, with the writer apparently disliking him regardless of whether they had seen the film. Others were critical but useful. He described one such reviewer as a fan who had not taken from his performance what he had hoped audiences would, prompting him to ask where he had fallen short. "Some are really good critics or write constructively about what you did wrong—and you can learn from it," he said.
The piece places McConaughey's approach within a broader pattern among prominent figures. Jason Bateman told Esquire that he reads all reviews of his television and film work because he is making projects for public consumption. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has grown the company to a $5.5 trillion valuation, said he is "always in a state of anxiety" about the company's survival and criticizes nearly everything his staff presents, arguing that feedback should be delivered promptly and aimed at improvement. Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet told LinkedIn's This Is Working podcast that some people need to be "hit by a two-by-four across the forehead" to absorb feedback.
The ability to absorb criticism is also being used as a hiring filter. Gagan Biyani, CEO of the education platform Maven and a cofounder of Udemy, now delivers critiques to job candidates during interviews, sometimes in front of full panels. He described this as the "most telling part" of the process and said candidates who freeze or become offended are signaling they are "not a fit" for the company.
McConaughey said the exercise revealed two categories of critics. Some reviews, he said, showed a bias from the first sentence, with the writer apparently disliking him regardless of whether they had seen the film. Others were critical but useful. He described one such reviewer as a fan who had not taken from his performance what he had hoped audiences would, prompting him to ask where he had fallen short. "Some are really good critics or write constructively about what you did wrong—and you can learn from it," he said.
The piece places McConaughey's approach within a broader pattern among prominent figures. Jason Bateman told Esquire that he reads all reviews of his television and film work because he is making projects for public consumption. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has grown the company to a $5.5 trillion valuation, said he is "always in a state of anxiety" about the company's survival and criticizes nearly everything his staff presents, arguing that feedback should be delivered promptly and aimed at improvement. Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet told LinkedIn's This Is Working podcast that some people need to be "hit by a two-by-four across the forehead" to absorb feedback.
The ability to absorb criticism is also being used as a hiring filter. Gagan Biyani, CEO of the education platform Maven and a cofounder of Udemy, now delivers critiques to job candidates during interviews, sometimes in front of full panels. He described this as the "most telling part" of the process and said candidates who freeze or become offended are signaling they are "not a fit" for the company.
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