A towering figure charged across a dimly lit room, his boots dripping with water, his eyes scanning for his next target.
“I literally was running across the street, giddy with the rain,” a grinning, umbrella-less Matthew Lillard said as he stooped to wrap me in a hug, slamming his soaking wet cheek against mine. “It was crazy.”
We were meeting for an interview at a coffee shop in Pasadena, Calif., not far from where Lillard lives, on a blustery February day that brought flood and wind advisories.
The actor, 57, has built a career on unpredictability. With his elastic expressions and manic energy, he has convincingly played everything from psychotic killers to lovable stoners.
But wrapped in a cozy, emerald green cardigan and absent-mindedly fiddling with his L.A. Dodgers cap, the unscripted Lillard channeled an endearing mix of dad-next-door humility and unsated ambition.
Thirty years after he first played the serial killer Stu Macher in “Scream,” Lillard is reprising the horror role in “Scream 7,” in theaters this weekend. He also recently co-starred in the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” films, appears in Season 2 of both the Amazon thriller series “Cross” and Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again,” and he’ll have a supporting role in Amazon’s upcoming “Carrie” mini-series.
“I’m more popular now than I’ve ever been in my life,” Lillard said, eyes wide.
The career renaissance isn’t the result of some renewed push after a period of relative relaxation. “I have been recharged and ready to go the whole [expletive] time,” he said. “I have been patiently waiting for somebody to be like, ‘Dude, we want you back.’”
AT FIRST, KEVIN WILLIAMSON didn’t want Lillard back. Williamson wrote the original “Scream” and signed on to direct a retooled version of “Scream 7” after the star Melissa Barrera’s contentious firing. But he had long been against the idea of resurrecting Stu.
Lillard, though, had spent years publicly campaigning for a return to the franchise. Never mind that his character had been stabbed multiple times and squashed by a large television set in the original 1996 film, Lillard had an arsenal of theories about how Stu could have survived.
“Finally, he kind of wore us down, and we realized that the fan reaction to him is so huge,” Williamson said, “and he’s such a beloved character that we thought, well, maybe there is a way he’s alive.” (Lillard’s one stipulation: “I don’t want to come back as a ghost,” he said. “I had to make sure that there was enough there to chew on and to really honor the character.”)
For the “Scream” star Neve Campbell, teaming up again with Lillard — the two briefly dated in the ’90s and have remained friends — felt exciting. “Stu is a crazy character, a dangerous character,” Campbell said. “The fact that he was able to find this humor in the insanity, it takes a certain kind of actor to be able to pull that off.”
IN THE DECADES BETWEEN the first “Scream” and the latest, Lillard has amassed nearly 200 credits, bouncing between horror, comedy and drama films, along with an array of TV and voice acting jobs.
For many millennials, he’s best known as Shaggy. The actor morphed into the hapless crime solver in two live-action “Scooby-Doo” films in the early 2000s and later voiced the character in dozens of animated projects.
“Seeing him as Shaggy for the first time was magical,” James Gunn, who wrote those films and described Lillard as kind and funny, said in an email. “I don’t think there have been many comic or cartoon characters brought so perfectly to life — in that way he reminds me of Margot [Robbie] as Harley Quinn or Heath Ledger as the Joker.”
But for every “SLC Punk!,” “She’s All That” or “The Descendants” that Lillard appeared in, there were also dozens of forgettable duds.
“I identify myself as a blue-collar actor,” Lillard said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be the best thing in the worst movie you’ve seen. I’ll hang my hat on that.’ But at some point, it came crashing down.”
In the mid-2000s, after “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” underperformed at the box office, Lillard went from steadily booking roles to struggling to pay the bills.
To make ends meet, he and his wife, Heather Lillard, with whom he shares three children, sold their house and cars and “downsized our entire life,” he said. His father-in-law suggested he start selling pharmaceuticals. His management team encouraged him to compete on “Dancing With the Stars.” Neither option felt like something he could stomach.
Instead, Lillard began teaching acting classes. Along with his knowledge of technique and craft, he imparted wisdom about what to do when the roles don’t materialize.
“The acting is easy. It’s the time between jobs that’s hard,” Lillard said. “How do you survive? That’s what nobody teaches.”
TENACITY HAD BEEN DRILLED into Lillard from an early age. After his family moved from Michigan to Orange County, Calif., when he was in the second grade, Lillard waded through his childhood and teenage years feeling ostracized in multiple ways.
“My whole life I have identified so clearly as an outsider because I was transplanted, then I was an obese teenager. I had a severe learning disability,” Lillard said. “I always felt different.”
When he was in the eighth grade and still had not found a single hobby that interested him, his father gave him a choice: acting class or typing class. He chose acting and found both his passion and a community that accepted him.
After a stint at community college, he enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena and soon landed a gig co-hosting “SK8-TV,” a low-budget Nickelodeon series about skateboarding.
Ahead of that short-lived show’s 1990 debut, Lillard took his parents and sister out for breakfast at Denny’s and gravely told them they had one last chance to go to Disneyland together as a normal family before he became an overnight celebrity.
“I am so delusional about the level of fame I’m about to reach,” Lillard recalled. “I’ve been to Disneyland 100 times since and nobody gives a [expletive].”
Yet, he added, “there is a bravado about that kid at that time that is congruent, I think, in a lot of ways to how I’ve gotten here.”
WHEN LILLARD BOOKED his first proper film role, a supporting part in the John Waters dark comedy “Serial Mom,” he loitered in front of cinemas after the film’s 1994 release hoping he’d be recognized by moviegoers. Results varied.
A couple of years later, while working on the first “Scream,” Lillard said that the director Wes Craven told him he would win an Oscar one day. And on subsequent sets, Lillard said, he was repeatedly told by producers that his performances tested “through the roof” with audiences.
“The director would say, ‘After this movie, you’re going to become a [expletive] star,’” Lillard recalled. “If I had a dollar for every time somebody said that.”
So it’s not surprising that Lillard said he spent many years carrying an unshakable sense that he was “about to blow up.”
“It’s Me vs. Everyone, right?” he said. “I’m like, I’m going to show Matt Damon what I’ve got. I’m going to be in the room against Ben Affleck. That’s clearly not how the industry works. But in my naïve sort of way, I’m going to get a shot to be the lead.”
While the post-“Scooby” slump eventually eased, Lillard still sees a dichotomy between his huge fan appeal and the industry recognition he has received. In casting, Lillard said, he’s usually a pinch-hitter, someone a director turns to in desperation when they can’t find another actor for the part.
“I am the best kept secret in Hollywood because the reality is, I go to conventions and my lines are crazy long. I do really well in that world,” he said. “When I jump onstage at a ‘Five Nights’ panel, people lose their minds, but Hollywood doesn’t get that.”
An exception has been Mike Flanagan. The director said Lillard was his “first and only choice” for a small but important role in “The Life of Chuck” (2025) and again for the forthcoming “Carrie” mini-series, in which Lillard plays a school principal.
Lillard has just a single scene in “The Life of Chuck” but, Flanagan said, it’s “an extraordinary piece of work.”
“It had this effervescence to it, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was how quickly that turned into vulnerability, and how that vulnerability kind of broke my heart,” he added. “I’ve seen people crying at the end of this scene, and he takes you there in less than five minutes.”
IN DECEMBER, QUENTIN TARANTINO singled out Lillard as an actor he didn’t “care for” in a podcast rant that also targeted Paul Dano and Owen Wilson.
Lillard has never worked with Tarantino and doesn’t recall ever interacting with the director other than maybe a brief hello “at some party at some point a long time ago.”
“I am the most boring person. I have zero beef with anyone, let alone Quentin Tarantino,” Lillard said. “This idea that I’m not his taste is fine. I could care less. I’m not for everyone, that’s for sure. But to be called out was a little shocking, to say the least.”
More heartening was the ensuing wave of support from friends and fans who rushed to defend Lillard’s talent.
“I was stunned because I thought, of every actor in the world, you pulled Matthew Lillard’s name out of your ass — I’m sorry, out of your head?” Williamson said in our interview. He added, “Of all the people who should be in a Quentin Tarantino movie, it’s him.”
While hearing the widespread praise “was like living through my own wake,” Lillard said, the kudos hasn’t led to any new roles. Most of Lillard’s coming work is still the product of hard-fought auditions, screen tests and efforts to actively pitch himself for consideration.
Lillard has likewise been campaigning to reteam with Gunn and join the DC Comics universe, where the director is one of the studio heads. He even texted Gunn, who remains a close friend, to make sure it would still be possible to appear in a future DC project if he took the “Daredevil” role with Marvel.
He’s also pursued other hustles and creative outlets should the roles dry up again. He’s the co-founder of a liquor line (one offering is Ghost Face vodka) and a tabletop gaming company. He’s active in a theater company, and, given the choice, he said he’d pick directing “way more than acting” as his focus going forward.
“All I can do is me,” Lillard said.
On Wednesday, at the Los Angeles premiere of “Scream 7,” Lillard held court inside a theater on the Paramount lot, doling out hugs and merrily posing for photos. As the film ended and the credits rolled, “with Matthew Lillard” appeared on a title card.
The audience cheered.
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