Matthew Lillard’s career began to pick up in the '90s with roles like Stu in the first Scream film, but he had his sights set on breaking into the world of blockbusters. He had high hopes for his role as Shaggy in Scooby-Doo, the 2002 live-action adaptation. The comedy was a decent box office success, leading Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel, which also brought Lillard the biggest paycheck of his career. At the time, he felt he was on a fast track to becoming an A-list star.
“I thought that for the next 10 years, I’d be the top choice for movie roles. In reality, the exact opposite happened,” Lillard lamented. The sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, hit theaters in 2004 but failed critically and commercially, earning less than $200 million worldwide compared to the original film’s nearly $300 million haul. While this wasn't necessarily the fault of Lillard or his Mystery Inc. co-stars Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Linda Cardellini, the outcome didn’t help his career. The flood of offers Lillard had hoped for never arrived.
Looking back two decades later, Lillard acknowledges he was too caught up in chasing fame. “I almost joined Dancing with the Stars. But I thought to myself, if I do that show, I’ll never be an Oscar-winning actor. I’d be famous, but not as a serious actor, and I really just wanted to be good at acting. So I told my agent I only wanted to act in films, to adjust my expectations.”
Turning down the popular dance show meant taking smaller roles whenever they came. “There were good times and bad times. I became irrelevant, and I thought I’d never work again,” Lillard recalled. While he didn’t become an Oscar-winning actor, he still landed parts in the Oscar-winning The Descendants, worked with Clint Eastwood (Trouble with the Curve) and David Lynch (Twin Peaks season 3), and recently played a prominent role in Five Nights at Freddy’s. And even after Monsters Unleashed, Lillard continued voicing Shaggy in numerous animated Scooby-Doo films and series, keeping his connection to the beloved character alive.
