Matthew Lillard on Scooby-Doo Flop, Rejecting ‘Dancing With the Stars’

Matthew Lillard thought his career would explode when the success of 2002’s live-action “Scooby-Doo” (the film earned $275 million worldwide) launched a franchise. The actor signed up to reprise the role of Shaggy in 2004’s “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” and earned the biggest payday of his career. The only way forward for his career was up. Or so he thought.

“I thought I’d be No. 1 on the call sheet for the next 10 years of movies,” Lillard recently admitted to Business Insider. “And the reality was the exact opposite happened.”

“Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” was a critical dud and flopped at the box office, failing to cross the $200 million mark worldwide that the original easily cleared. The failure of the “Scooby-Doo” sequel resulted in Lillard’s career coming to a screeching halt and forced him to reprioritize his goals as an actor.

“I was caught up in the success of what I was doing, I was caught up in the parts I was getting, I was caught up in this drive to be quote-unquote famous,” Lillard admitted, noting that he finally had to stop caring about chasing fame.

“I was going to do ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ And I was like, if I do ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ I’ll never win an Academy Award,” Lillard said. “If I do ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ I’ll be famous and not a great actor, and I really just wanted to be a great actor. I said [to my agent], ‘I just want to be an actor. I just want to be in movies. I want to reset my expectations.’”

The actor added, “I’ve gone through good patches and bad patches. I’ve been irrelevant and thought I was never going to work again.”

A change in thinking allowed Lillard to breakthrough in ways he was not expecting. While he continued to voice Shaggy in various animated “Scooby-Doo” films, he also won supporting roles in films like the Oscar-winning “The Descendants” and Clint Eastwood’s “Trouble With the Curve.”