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• Florence Pugh has said it's "exhausting" to be a young woman in the acting industry.
• Pugh told The Times of London that female movie stars face being called divas if they don't follow stereotypes.
• "There are fine lines women have to stay within," she said.

Florence Pugh has opened up about what it's like to be a young woman in Hollywood, describing the experience as "exhausting."

In an interview with The Times of London published on Sunday, the 28-year-old British star reflected on her decadelong career as an actor and issues in the industry.

"There are fine lines women have to stay within, otherwise they are called a diva, demanding, problematic. And I don't want to fit into stereotypes made by others," Pugh said. "It is really exhausting for a young woman to just be in this industry, and actually other industries."

Pugh rose to fame after making her movie debut in "The Falling" in 2014. She followed that up with roles in "Midsommar," "Black Widow," "Oppenheimer," "Dune: Part Two," and "Little Women" — the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination.

Pugh told The Times that throughout her career, she had loved challenging ideas she didn't like, such as how women in the public eye are expected to look.

"I remember watching this industry and feeling that I wasn't represented. I remember godawful headlines about how Keira Knightley isn't thin anymore, or watching women getting torn apart despite being talented and beautiful," she said. "The only thing people want to talk about is some useless crap about how they look. And so I didn't care to abide by those rules."

Pugh has frequently spoken out over comments to do with her body or look.

In 2019, the actor called out a publication for "singling out my 'chunky' thighs" in a review of one of her movies.

The "We Live in Time" star also told The Telegraph in 2022 that she was told to lose weight and change her "look" when she was cast in a failed television pilot at the start of her career.

Pugh also spoke out over comments she received after wearing a transparent pink gown to a Valentino Haute Couture show in 2022.

In the interview with The Times, Pugh said: "I wanted to challenge how women were perceived, how we are supposed to look."

"Actually I wasn't trying to challenge. I just wanted to be there, to make space for a version of a person that isn't all the things they used to have to be," Pugh said. "I'm proud I've stuck by myself and look the way I look — I'm really interested in people who are still angry with me for not losing more weight, or who just hate my nose ring."

"I am not going to be able to just change the way that things are — but I can certainly help young women coming into this industry by making conversations happen where they weren't before," she added.

The actor recently revealed that she had been previously diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis and that it had prompted her to freeze her eggs.

• Business Insider spoke to up-and-coming filmmakers and professors as OpenAI's Sora debuted.
• AI video generation could open the door for indie filmmakers — and more blockbusters.
• Fear of job losses looms, but one professor called AI text tools a bigger threat.

Up-and-coming filmmakers and professors at some of the nation's top film schools say the arrival of OpenAI video generators like Sora signals a democratization of the industry may be afoot, even though the tech is still limited.

Sora rolled out widely on Monday following a February pilot program. The tool generates short video clips — 20 seconds max — from users' text prompts. Sora can also modify existing clips.

For example, say a user wants to create a scene with green monsters in a thunderstorm. To do that, she'd type a prompt, and Sora would spit out a file.

While bold-faced creators are already bracing for impact, early Sora testers told Business Insider it gave them new ways to think about their work — even as others also complained the platform appeared to regurgitate content from a limited database.

Michaela Ternasky-Holland was one of the first directors to create and premiere a short film using Sora. It screened at Tribeca in 2024. She said she's excited about Sora's potential to cut filmmaking's development costs by creating things like sizzle reels, but she's aware of its limitations.

These things are giving you an illusion of control. And no matter how good the generations are, there's still someone behind them prompting it," she said. "Just because someone has a 4K camera, it doesn't make them a Steven Spielberg."

Dana Polan, a professor of cinema studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, said AI image generators aren't stoking the same fears as their text-based counterparts.

That's because many in Hollywood see the screenplay as "the first act of creativity," said Polan, who noted that other people in the filmmaking process, including cinematographers, are already seen as "adapters into images of words."

While he remains optimistic about AI in film, George Huang, a professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television — who has experimented with AI tools in his own moviemaking — concedes the technology has a bad rap in Hollywood, which has made countless movies on the topic.

"We think AI is now coming to destroy all of us, and that's a narrative that Hollywood created," he said. "It's embedded in our culture."

Sora's not quite ready for prime time — yet

Industry watchers told Business Insider that they don't foresee Sora or AI image generation appearing widely in finished films just yet given that the image quality still exists in something of an "uncanny valley."

Sora's pace of improvement has slowed down with later versions, Ternasky-Holland said. For example, it still struggles to put multiple characters in a scene no matter how many times it's prompted, she said.

But Polan told BI the tech could come in handy for the previsualization process — or animated storyboards to check pacing and flow. Huang also said he could see it being used as a "pitch reel" for screenwriters.

That said, other AI startups like Runway have created tools already used across the industry to expedite editing, with clients that include "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and the effects team behind "Everything Everywhere All At Once."

Michael Gilkison, a Lexington, Kentucky-based filmmaker whose latest project, "The Finish Line," is on Amazon's Prime Video, said a free AI app helped create a scene where a car was crushed. "That would have cost a lot more 20 years ago," he said over email. Using AI technology could also create cheaper ways to film period pieces. But it also can negate the need to hire extras, which can deprive a film of its spirit.

"As a producer, I would use it to keep the cost down, but it is all about balance," Gilkison said.

Tahsis Fairley, a creative producing student at Chapman University, said via email he envisions using Sora to expedite storyboarding and illustrate ideas to his team.

"We will be able to test out new visual ideas without investing significant amounts of money," Fairley said.

That said, Huang doesn't believe we're far off from full implementation, saying AI could appear within completed films "by the end of the next year easily."

Cost savings could boost indies and blockbusters alike

The expenses associated with filmmaking can put a damper on artistic vision, Huang said. But students are generally receptive to new technology, Polan said.

ChatGPT Plus subscribers, who pay $20 a month, get up to 50 Sora generations a month that are five seconds maximum. ChatGPT Pro users, who pay $200 a month, get unlimited generations up to 20 seconds in length.

In slashing costs, Huang said platforms like Sora are bound to "almost democratize the filmmaking process, sort of lower those barriers to entry." In addition to more tools for indie filmmakers working in the margins, this could also mean more blockbusters produced at a relative discount by major studios, he said.

Fairley, for his part, sees AI as a "double-edged sword."

While he cheered its efficiency gains, he expressed concern about job losses across the industry — particularly in fields like animation, pointing to a Coca-Cola Chrismas ad created entirely with AI.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting its linear TV business from streaming and studios.
• Comcast last month also spun off its cable networks — except Bravo — into a stand-alone company.
• The moves illustrate a cable business in decline, with both repositioning for M&A opportunities.

Warner Bros. Discovery is separating its linear television business from its streaming business and film studios.

It follows a similar move by Comcast, which announced in November it would spin off all of its NBCUniversal cable networks except Bravo into a stand-alone company.

The new corporate structure will be complete by the middle of next year, WBD said. Unlike Comcast, WBD won't spin its assets off into a separate company.

A new Global Linear Networks division will house TV properties like the Discovery Channel and CNN, while the Streaming & Studios side will be the home of Max and movie studio Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.

"Our Global Linear Networks business is well positioned to continue to drive free cash flow, while our Streaming & Studios business focuses on driving growth," WBD president and CEO David Zaslav said in a statement.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter said the move was meant to clean up the company's structure, which was formed in 2022 from the combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery. (Discovery itself was the product of its acquisition of Scripps Networks in 2017.)

This person said the company is still determining how the specific business units will be divided, and no leadership changes were planned.

The moves by both Comcast and WBD illuminate a cable business increasingly in decline. Their repositioning of properties could help them participate in potential mergers and acquisitions expected to reshape the media and entertainment industry in 2025.

Warner Bros. Discovery was supposed to create scale and value and help compete with Big Tech by mashing WarnerMedia's prestige networks like HBO and CNN with Discovery's lifestyle properties like HGTV. But its stock has sunk to about a third of its value at the time of its creation in 2022. (It was up about 14% Thursday morning on the news of the new organization.)

Industry observers say a Comcast-like spin wouldn't be favorable for WBD because it needs the cash from its linear channels to pay down the heavy debt it took on to form the company.

Still, they see WBD bulking up or shedding channels, with Paramount Global or Comcast seen as the most likely merger partners.

The announcement was met with mixed reactions from analysts. BofA Securities, which has long argued that WBD should sell assets or merge with another company, said in a note that it saw WBD's linear assets as a logical partner for the Comcast SpinCo, while its streaming and studio assets could be an attractive takeover target for multiple suitors.

Longtime ad industry advisor Brian Wieser said that as with the Comcast SpinCo, a WBD separation weakens the company on a few fronts, though. Without being tethered to the cable channels, he said, it'll be harder for WBD's streamer Max to grow its ads business, which is becoming increasingly important. The linear networks will lose leverage in distribution negotiations without Max and have trouble attracting talent if they're seen as a declining business, among other issues, he said.

In July, WBD reportedly floated the idea to investors of essentially undoing the 2022 merger to create the two separate divisions. And in August, the company said its TV assets were worth $9 billion less than it had anticipated just two years ago.

• Jeffrey Katzenberg, the cofounder of DreamWorks, said Hollywood bigshots are embracing AI.
• He said the top showrunners and creators find AI an "amazing resource."
• During the monthslong WGA strike last year, writers opposed the adoption of AI.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the cofounder of DreamWorks, said Hollywood is warming up to the use of artificial intelligence.

Speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, he said top Hollywood showrunners and creators are embracing AI.

"I would say almost across the board they have all talked about how the AI tools today have been helpful to them," Katzenberg said.

"They have seen them as a resource and an asset that have made them more productive," he said about AI tools, adding that with the use of AI, creators have been "able to widen the diversity of their work, the quality of their work."

"They find these tools an amazing resource for them — and it's not constraining them, it's inspiring them," he added.

DreamWorks Animation is the force behind animated classics like "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda," and "How to Train Your Dragon."

Katzenberg's comments come after Hollywood writers spent months on strike last year, partially in reaction to the use of AI in their industry.

More than 11,000 film and TV screenwriters went on strike from May to September 2023 after the Writers Guild of America, or WGA, could not agree on a labor contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP.

The strike was aimed at securing better wages and fairer work practices, and at prompting more regulation of the use of AI in film writing and production.

The strike led to key wins: The WGA agreement with AMPTP said the AMPTP members can use AI-generated material but can't write or rewrite literary material with AI.

Under the agreement, AI-generated material won't be considered source material, a rule that will protect writers from having their credit undermined by AI. Writers also can't be required to use AI software.

Katzenberg previously said AI could reduce the cost of animated films by 90%.

"I think AI as a creative tool, think of that as a new form, a new paintbrush or new camera, has so much opportunity around it," he said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore in November 2023.

"Well, the good old days when, you know, I made an animated movie, it took 500 artists five years to make a world-class animated movie," he said.

"I don't think it will take 10% of that three years out from now," he added.

Representatives for DreamWorks didn't respond to a request for comment from BI, sent outside regular business hours.

• Keira Knightley recalled how she was told that she "wanted to be stalked" early in her career.
• Knightley became famous after starring in "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Love Actually" in 2003.
• Now, she's opening up about how toxic Hollywood was for women in the early 2000s.

Keira Knightley was told she "wanted to be stalked" at the beginning of her career. The actor spoke about the "violent, misogynistic atmosphere" of Hollywood in the 2000s in an interview on Thursday.

The British actor became famous after landing roles in "Love Actually" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" in 2003 at 17-years-old. As a result, Knightley spent her late teens and early 20s under the press's microscope.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times ahead of her new Netflix series, "Black Doves," Knightley recalled being told that she "wanted to be stalked" during her rise to fame.

In response to a question by the LA Times reporter about the culture of Hollywood back then, Knightley said, "I didn't think it was okay at the time. I was very clear on it being absolutely shocking. There was an amount of gaslighting to be told by a load of men that 'you wanted this.' It was rape speak. You know, 'This is what you deserve.'"

Knightley continued to paint a picture of the negative atmosphere in early 2000s Hollywood that women had to navigate.

She added, "It was a very violent, misogynistic atmosphere. They very specifically meant I wanted to be stalked by men. Whether that was stalking because somebody was mentally ill, or because people were earning money from it — it felt the same to me. It was a brutal time to be a young woman in the public eye."

The star is also conscious that despite the harassment and pressure she faced, her early work gave her "financial stability."

"It's very brutal to have your privacy taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put under that scrutiny at a point when you are still growing. Having said that, I wouldn't have the financial stability or the career that I do now without that period," she said.

Keira Knightley was 17 when she first starting filming the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise in 2003. She played Elizabeth Swann, the point of a love triangle opposite Orlando Bloom, who was 26 at the time, and Johnny Depp who was 22 years Knightley's senior.

She of said the five-year period of success in her early career, "It totally set me up for life. Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost."

The thing that got the actor through her turbulent era of fame was having people around her who were disconnected from Hollywood.

She added, "I had a separate life from the industry, and I've maintained that."

This isn't the first time that Knightley has opened up about the toxicity she endured at a young age.

In November, she recalled how her role in "Pirates of the Caribbean" was the main reason she was "taken down publicly."

In 2018, Knightley told The Hollywood Reporter that paparazzi constantly followed her because they wanted to tear her down.

"It was big money to get pictures of women falling apart because you [consumers] wanted them to be sexy, but you wanted to punish them for that sexuality," she said.

• Nicole Kidman is one of the busiest working actors in Hollywood.
• But when she turned 40, she wasn't sure how much longer she'd have a career.
• Kidman recalled her agent convincing her that 40 wasn't the end for her.

Nicole Kidman has reached new heights in her career over the last decade. It's not something she expected — in fact, when she was 40, she thought her career might be winding down for good.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Kidman reflected on her prolific acting career and her eventual foray into producing. She recalled being in her early 40s, after producing and starring in the 2010 film "Rabbit Hole," and feeling like her days in the industry were numbered.

"It was at that crossroads, actually, where you go, 'Oh, I'm either going to drift away now or things will solidify,'" Kidman, now 57, told THR. "You were told to retire at a certain age."

Kidman said her agent convinced her she had plenty of work still ahead of her.

"My agent, Kevin Huvane, when I was 40, was like, 'It's not over, Nicole. It's going to begin now.' And I was like, "What? No, I think it's over,' and he's like, 'Uh-uh,'" she said.

Huvane, who is also Meryl Streep's agent, turned out to be right. Kidman is more in demand than ever, toplining six separate projects this year alone, including the Taylor Sheridan spy thriller "Lioness," the hit Netflix series "The Perfect Couple," and the upcoming A24 erotic drama "Babygirl." The latter is already being lauded as Kidman's most interesting and daring role in years.

Kidman credited her support system, including her producing partner, her husband Keith Urban, and their two daughters, Sunday Rose, 16, and Faith, 13, with keeping her career thriving. She also noted that things seem to be changing in the industry for the better.

"People are living longer and there's more to be said, and more stories to be told," Kidman said.

"It's about whether you still feel vibrant and alive. And that has a lot to do with nourishing your soul and staying in a place of curiosity and not sleepy," she added. "Dreamy is good, but not sleepy."

• This month, Walmart launched its first shoppable feature film, "Jingle Bell Love," with Roku.
• It's ramping up its efforts this holiday to get people to shop while watching TV.
• Walmart made some key changes to its shoppable entertainment strategy this year.

Walmart is making its biggest push yet this holiday season to get people to shop while watching TV by debuting its first feature-length movie.

Last year, Walmart brought viewers "Add to Heart," a rom-com series with integrated shopping features that was designed to be watched on social media. It's building on that this year by sponsoring its first "shoppable" feature film, "Jingle Bell Love," which is a Roku Original movie.

"Jingle Bell Love" is streaming now on The Roku Channel. Here's the logline: Jack Cooper, played by Joey McIntyre from "New Kids on the Block," visits his late wife's hometown for Christmas and gets more than he bargained for when his 10-year-old daughter matches him up with a local shop owner (Michelle Morgan).

Last year's "Add to Heart" was a test for Walmart to see if it could get people to shop directly while watching episodic TV. Online reviewers were mixed in their assessments: Some said the quality of the series was decent while others criticized the script and said the shopping experience felt clunky.

Walmart didn't share specific results of last year's experiment but made some key tweaks this time around:

• First, "Jingle Bell Love" is a feature film. Walmart learned that the longer people watched, the more likely they were to shop, and it hopes a film will encourage people to watch from start to finish.
• Walmart also produced "Add to Heart" itself, while "Jingle Bell Love" is a Roku production.
• "Add to Heart" crammed 330 shoppable products into the show. "Jingle Bell Love," in contrast, doesn't have any direct product integration. Instead, there are two "shoppable moments" featuring overlays with five Walmart products that are contextually relevant to the scene that people can buy directly on their TVs.
• During its "Add to Heart" launch, Walmart found people wanted more and easier ways to shop. This year, it's added the ability for people to link their Walmart and Roku accounts by clicking an ad on the screen with their remote, which sends a prompt to their phone to sign in to Walmart.com. From there, whenever a Roku user reaches the checkout screen, their Walmart payment details are pre-populated so they can buy with a single tap.

"'Add to Heart' was one of the first times that we really created that fully shoppable type of video experience," Aimee Roesler, senior director of social commerce at Walmart, told Business Insider. "One of our key insights is that it can be very hard to shop from your remote control."

Are people ready for shoppable TV?

Retailers have been pushing "shoppable TV" — where people can buy products straight from their TV sets — for some time as they try to drive sales and media companies try to connect ads to business results.

For instance, during the CMT Music Awards in April, Paramount used QR codes to try to get people to buy items inspired by the red carpet looks. NBCUniversal had a tool that let people order food while watching the Olympics this summer.

Still, there's been a big challenge for these efforts: Shopping on TV isn't the most natural behavior for viewers. Add the fact that shoppable TV doesn't always fit neatly into ad agencies' buying practices, and it's been slow to take off.

Christopher Vollmer, a partner and managing director at UTA's MediaLink, said retailers and media companies have gotten smarter about shoppable TV, knowing video content is where most consumers discover new brands and products. He sees them increasingly prioritizing premium content environments like sports for their efforts, as that's where there are big, live audiences. This year, for example, Walmart and NBCUniversal are bringing shoppable ads to a Thanksgiving Day NFL game.

As the biggest US retailer, Walmart has a strong incentive to figure it out. The company has been experimenting in many ways. It's trying shoppable ads on social media, gaming platforms, and streaming TV.

Walmart said Roku was a natural partner, as 78% of the platform's audience are Walmart shoppers. Despite the large customer overlap, in the past couple of years of testing, Walmart said 70% of its shoppers from Roku were new to Walmart.com.

"Now we've gained a new type of shopping behavior and a new customer who has typically shopped our store now is shopping our store and our website, which is very, very exciting," Roesler said.

"Jingle Bell Love" isn't the only way Walmart will try to get people to shop from their TVs this holiday season. It created four videos — inspired by the YouTube ambient room trend — that are meant to immerse the viewer in a pleasant environment. All are shoppable with QR codes linking to decor and gifts sold at Walmart. The rooms portray a cozy chalet, a festive holiday party scene, Santa's reindeer in flight, and Luke's Diner of "Gilmore Girls" (an example of Walmart's effort to integrate itself into the culture). They'll be streamed on YouTube, YouTube TV, and Roku starting December 3.

Shoppable ad breaks will also pop up during a family movie night series in which Walmart is teaming up with Roku to offer classics like "Stuart Little" and "Miracle on 34th Street" on The Roku Channel.

• Cher came back from owing $270,000 in back taxes only to wind up broke again years later.
• The star makes several striking points about money in her memoir published this week.
• Cher says she overspent, lacked financial acumen, and benefited from owning real estate.

Cher has made and lost several fortunes in her career. The "Believe" singer, who shot to fame with hits including "I Got You Babe" with her ex-husband Sonny Bono, reflects on her financial triumphs and troubles in her new book, "Cher: The Memoir, Part One."

Here are six points she makes about money:

1. Feeling safe

Cher's parents struggled financially, so she often had to give things up she liked. When she made it big, the performer found comfort in having backup products.

"I was so insecure about becoming poor again that I started buying two of a few key household items in case we needed to replace things that had worn out," she writes.

"There was no logic to owning two electric frying pans or two hair dryers — I'd have been a broke housewife with great hair — but it made me feel better because since childhood I'd been accustomed to losing what I had or being forced to trade down to a worse situation."

2. Overspending

"We're broke, Cher. We owe the IRS $270,000 in back taxes and we don't have the money," Bono said to Cher in the late 1960s, in her telling.

Cher realized that she'd spent almost precisely that amount on her dream house. "That's how people in the movie industry or music business get into such trouble," she writes.

"You come from nothing and suddenly you've got all this money and you're doing Ed Sullivan and people are screaming for you all over the world and you think it's gonna last forever," she continued. "Then one day it dries up and you realize you never had any backup."

In 1980, Cher was on the brink of declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy when she was saved by a man who'd bought some apartment buildings from her — he decided to pay in full instead of in installments.

"Thank you, God," she writes. "I vowed never to overextend myself like that again. (Not that it stuck—I've been overextending myself in a million ways my whole life!)."

3. Financial acumen

Cher writes she was "someone who didn't know my ass from first base when it came to money."

She never considered that Bono might not be financially savvy or the best person to manage their money, and the pair didn't have a business manager.

Cher later relied on David Geffen, a music and film producer, to help her handle her finances.

4. Checking contracts

After separating from Bono in the 1970s, Cher learned from Geffen that despite being a duet for years, the pair were far from equal partners.

"Sweetheart, this contract is involuntary servitude," Geffen told Cher in her telling. "You work for Sonny. You have no rights, no vote, no money, nothing."

Cher writes in her memoir that "the contracts he'd had me sign were secretly designed to strip me of my income and the rights to my own career."

In 1980, when Cher discovered her managers were making more money than her, she swiftly fired them.

5. Diversified portfolio

Cher writes that when she had spare cash at one point, she invested some of it in apartment buildings which she later sold. The buyer's decision to pay in full instead of in installments not only taught her a lesson in not overextending herself, it also showed the power of holding assets and the value of a diversified portfolio.

In this case, parking her money in real estate spared her from bankruptcy.

6. Helping family

After her career took off, Cher supported her mom financially and at one point gave her money to open a store called Granny's Cabbage Patch in Brentwood, California.

"Mom's store attracted a lot of press attention, but it was never solvent and soon began to lose money," Cher writes. "As my business manager put it, 'Georgia's independence is killing you.'"

• Matthew McConaughey didn't want to keep acting in romcoms, so he moved to Texas.
• The "Interstellar" actor rejected a $14.5 million role to star in an action comedy.
• Being able to say "no" is also an important leadership skill.

Learning to say "no" helped Matthew McConaughey explore roles beyond romcoms.

In Wednesday's episode of "Good Trouble" with Nick Kyrgios, McConaughey, 55, said that saying "no" is more important than saying "yes."

"The devil's in the infinite yeses, not the nos," he said.

The "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" actor recalled when he was "rolling with the romcoms" in the 1990s and 2000s.

"I was the romcom dude. That was my lane, and I liked that lane, that lane paid well, and it was working," he said. However, the industry was resistant when he wanted to play characters in other movie genres.

"I was so strong in that lane that anything outside of that lane, dramas and stuff that I wanted to do, they were like, 'No, no, no, no, no,'" he recalled.

In response, McConaughey left California and returned to his home state, Texas, with his wife. "I went down there and made a pact with her and said, 'I'm not going back to work unless I get offered roles I want to do,'" he said.

Around two years into his move, he received an offer for a role in an action comedy. The offer was originally at $8 million, but McConaughey rejected it. When the offer was raised to $14.5 million, he said he considered it.

"It was a better script. I mean, it was funnier, I could see myself in this, this might work for you, McConaughey. This might be one to come back and do," he said. Still, he rejected it.

"That was probably what was seen as the most rebellious move in Hollywood by me because it really sent the signal, 'He ain't fucking bluffing,'" McConaughey said.

McConaughey eventually landed roles in drama and thriller movies like "Killer Joe" and "Dallas Buyers Club," the latter of which he won an Academy Award.

"And boy, when those offers came, I was salivating, man," he said. "I just bit on it and went back to back to back, and worked as much as I could, and loved it. I felt every bit of it."

The power of saying "no"

McConaughey is not the only actor who's learned to say "no" for their career.

Paul Reiser recently told Business Insider his advice for fellow actors is to "say yes to everything, except for the things you have to say no to."

"There are career decisions, especially when you're young, you say yes to because you'll gain something from it," the "Stranger Things" actor said. "But I think as I've gotten older, saying no is just as important."

Being able to say "no" is also an important leadership skill.

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has been quoted as saying, "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

Similarly, in his 2014 lecture, "How to Start a Startup" at Stanford University, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, said that the trick to great execution as a founder is to "say no a lot."

"You know, you're saying no 97 times out of 100," he said. "And most founders find that they have to make a very conscious effort to do this."

A representative for McConaughey did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.