Matthew McConaughey wasn’t sure he wanted to star in the 2003 rom-com How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Then, a fortune teller stopped him out of nowhere on Sunset Boulevard and convinced him to take the role.
He recalled the bizarre experience with the “fortune teller guru” in a recent interview with Vanity Fair for an oral history about How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in which he stars opposite Kate Hudson as an advertising executive named Ben who makes a bet with his colleagues that he can make any woman fall in love with him. Little does she know, Hudson’s magazine writer character Andie has just signed on to write a story about why men break up with women — and she’s committed to testing out her theorized methods on Ben.
Kate Hudson’s Memory
“We were looking at guys and kept going back and forth about who would be the right guy. The guy for me was really important. Matthew came up in a meeting and I thought that was a great idea. I loved his energy. We immediately just got along,” Hudson told Vanity Fair.
Bu Matthew McConaughey was on the fence — until something mysterious happened.
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Matthew McConaughey Recalls
“I remember considering whether I was going to do it or not one night while on a walk down Sunset Boulevard when suddenly, this guy comes up out of nowhere to me — he was a fortune teller guru [and] goes, ‘Can I tell you your fortune real quick?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, man. Sure,” Matthew McConaughey recalled.
“He immediately goes, ‘There’s a movie you’re considering right now. It’s a romantic comedy. You have to do this or it will be one of the biggest regrets of your life. It is going to be a blast, it is going to be an incredible experience and it is going to make a bunch of money. I remember thinking, Did the studio hire this guy? I laughed at the thought, but I also remember taking a more serious consideration. I think I even accepted the offer the next day,” he added.
Director Donald Petrie Weighs In
In order to explain why McConaughey’s character, who is a New Yorker, sounds so much like a Texan, director Donald Petrie says they gave his character some backstory to explain.
“I went to the writers and said, ‘Okay, I gotta have some kind of subtle explanation of why this guy is an advertising exec in Manhattan, and yet he’s got that Texas twang about him.’ So we took his father and made him be a Navy guy, so he would have been stationed at different places around the world, and Celia Weston, who came in to play the mom, she is Southern,” Petrie said.
The result is one of those absolute classic early 2000s romantic comedies that you can watch again and again and never get tired of it.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was directed by Donald Petrie and written by Kristen Buckley, Brian Regan and Burr Steers. It was based on the book How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long. The cast of the movie also includes Kathryn Hahn, Annie Parisse, Adam Goldberg, Thomas Lennon, Michael Michele, Shalom Harlow, Robert Klein, Bebe Neuwirth, Samantha Quan, Archie MacGregor, John DiResta, Rebecca Harris, and James Murtaugh.
Main Image: Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson smile on a meet-the-parents date in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures