Matthew Lillard Reflects on His Journey to Be a Great Actor

Matthew Lillard has been in the acting game for decades, and depending on when you grew up, you mainly know him thanks to Hackers, Scream, or Scooby-Doo (both live-action and animation). He’s one of those stars who seems to be always working, and to hear him tell it, that’s because he put the work in to become a reliable actor.

Business Insider recently did a spotlight on Lillard, wherein he reminisced about the arc of his career. After breaking out in the ’90s, he became “caught up in this drive of trying to be ‘famous,’ and the success of what I was doing.” The critical and financial failure of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed had him thinking he’d “never work again,” and later an offer to appear on Dancing With the Stars, made him realize he “really just wanted to be a great actor.” So he decided to reset his life by looking at non-acting ventures (like his liquor business) and teaching acting while taking on roles that he ffelt would best suit him as a performer. When he wasn’t voicing Shaggy in Scooby media, he spent the last decade in supporting roles on Good Girls, Twin Peaks, and Halt and Catch Fire.

But it was last year’s Blumhouse hit Five Nights at Freddy’s that’s put bigger eyes on him, particularly with younger audiences. Lillard admitted to Business Insider that he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of his role as William Afton at first, since the original scripts only gave him about “two lines.” He called it a “leap of faith” role, and it was only after director Emma Tammi told him that Afton would be more central in a planned trilogy that he really got the picture. He, along with leading man Josh Hutcherson, are both returning for the sequel coming out in December 2025.

Beyond that, Lillard will also appear in next year’s Life of Chuck from Mike Flanagan. But what about Scream, which has brought back surviving characters (and some not) for its newer sequels? He reiterated to Business Insider that he’d be fine to return if the conversation arose, and separately told GamesRadar the franchise is in a “really good place.” His feelings on the violence aside—to him, Ghostface shouldn’t have had a shotgun in Scream 6—he said he hopes director Kevin Williamson (who wrote the first and fourth movies) takes Scream 7 “in a brand new, brave, and exciting direction so that we can sort of find different colors and different joys.”

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