Jennifer Garner Reveals Matthew McConaughey Stopped Her from Quitting Dallas Buyers Club
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Jennifer Garner was ready to walk away from her role in the Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club when costar Matthew McConaughey stepped in with some sage wisdom.
The actress, 48, revealed how McConaughey, 50, helped her on the set of the 2013 drama during a recent interview with Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan, sharing that she had wanted to quit the project during a particularly hard day of filming, but the actor eventually talked her out of it.
Garner began by explaining that she had just welcomed her son Samuel Garner, now 8, when her agent called her about the movie, encouraging her to take a role in the film because she had "taken so much time" away from acting to focus on her family.
"So I took it, and that was why" she recalled. "Because it was time for me to go back to work."
However, the mother of three — who also shares daughters Seraphina Rose Elizabeth, 11, and Violet Anne, 14, with ex-husband Ben Affleck — was still breastfeeding at the time and the production's rigorous shooting schedule made it difficult for her to pump breast milk because "there was never a 10-minute break."
"My boobs were freaking out," she recalled. "It was bedtime, and we were doing some scene that was supposed to be light, and I started crying and I was like, 'I have to quit. I have to go home and be with my kids. I just can’t do this anymore.' "
"And sweet Matthew McConaughey pulled me aside and said, 'What is going on with you?' " Garner remembered, visibly getting emotional.
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The Peppermint star said McConaughey then asked the crew to take a break so she could pump in private.
"And from then on, whenever I needed to, I would give him a high sign and I would go take care of it," Garner shared. "He said, 'You can do both. You’ve got it. You can do it.' "
“How much do I love that guy? I know, a lot," she added.
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McConaughey also had nothing but kind words about Garner when he spoke to PEOPLE in 2016, saying that he "could trust Jennifer with anything."
In addition to Dallas Buyers Club, Garner and McConaughey previously costarred in the 2009 romantic comedy, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.
McConaughey said in his new memoir Greenlights that he turned down a $14.5 million paycheck in 2010 after being offered to star in yet another rom-com. Though he "enjoyed making romantic comedies," the actor was ready for something else.
“I declined the offer," he wrote. "If I couldn’t do what I wanted, I wasn’t going to do what I didn’t, no matter the price."
