‘Scream 7’ star Matthew Lillard remembers selling his house, cars and starting over. At 56, he’s having a Hollywood moment (again).

At 56, Matthew Lillard knows he’s “having a moment.” That’s thanks to projects like Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Cross, Daredevil: Born Again and — in a return to the franchise that put him on the map 30 years ago — Scream 7, in theaters now. He’s enjoying it while he can.

“Having been around a hundred years, I understand this too will pass. All of it ebbs and flows,” Lillard tells me for Yahoo’s new interview series Off the Cuff. “I can appreciate it way more than when I was younger.”

Staying power in this industry, he’s quick to point out, doesn’t come from the highs alone. It comes from surviving the relentless auditions, the uncertainty, the quiet panic about what comes next.

“It’s the time between jobs that is brutal for an actor,” he says.

It’s a reality he speaks about with unusual candor for a veteran star: the financial unpredictability, the pressure of providing for a family and the emotional toll of watching peers’ careers soar while yours stalls. Offscreen, the stakes were very real. Lillard has been married to his wife, Heather Helm, a realtor, for 25 years, and together they share three children, now 17, 21 and 23.

At one point, he recalls, he and his wife even reevaluated their entire lifestyle, selling their house and cars to reset priorities. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m more ego than I am work,’” he says. “We reconsidered what was important and how we were living.”

Comparison too played its part in shaping his perspective on success. Early in his career, Lillard lived with Paul Rudd. Watching a friend’s trajectory accelerate while navigating his own ups and downs stirred a familiar industry anxiety.

“For the longest time, I was jealous,” he admits. “And at some point, you realize it just does not serve you. In fact, it’s so destructive.”

It’s a philosophy shaped by fatherhood, teaching, side hustles and the simple dignity of steady work — whether that meant voicing Shaggy week after week or coaching his kids’ soccer teams during quieter seasons. Those years, he says now, were just as formative as the blockbuster ones.

So while returning to the Scream franchise three decades after the original might look like a victory lap, Lillard approaches it with the perspective of someone who knows nothing in Hollywood is permanent. And despite the hard-earned wisdom, he still sounds like a fan at heart — at one point enthusiastically calling Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi “freaking delicious” and admiring the actor’s now-famous handbag.

Below, he opens up about the real economics of being a working actor, the humbling seasons that shaped him and why surviving this long in Hollywood may be his most impressive role yet.

You’ve talked about how unpredictable this industry can be. How did building businesses outside of acting change your relationship to the highs and lows of the job?

Acting is the greatest job in the world. Early in my life, I defined myself by whether I was working, and when I was working, I felt like I was who I was supposed to be. When I wasn’t, I was miserable.

So I learned I have to fill my life with things I’m engaged in — building community, taking on challenges. Six years ago, I started Beadle & Grimm’s with some guys I play Dungeons & Dragons with. I also launched Find Familiar Spirits, where we create high-end spirit experiences built around fandom communities. It’s been hugely successful, a blast and it’s a really rewarding new challenge emotionally.

How does coming back to Scream 7 decades later hit differently now that you’re older, wiser and have lived more life?

It hits differently because I’m nervous! If I come back and I suck and people hate me, then I’ve ruined the legacy that I’ve had. So I hope that I don’t totally suck. But I just saw it, and I think the movie’s epic. I think people are gonna lose their minds.

How was it reconnecting with Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and the rest of the cast?

I’ve always been in touch with Neve; we’re dear friends. We hang out intermittently with our families. I see Skeet [Ulrich] all the time.

I didn’t go to college. I tried multiple times. I really sucked at that. So, Scream was kind of like my college experience. We became this tight-knit group of friends that hung out all the time. We went to dinner every weekend. We would go drinking after work at 6 a.m., covered in blood. We just had that kind of experience where we became family.

And so all these years later, we remain eternally close. They’re my people.

What did the quieter seasons in your career teach you that the busy times couldn’t?

When I was younger, it was humbling. I was really miserable during those times. I would go and play golf, which sounds great, but not when you don’t have a job and you don’t know when you’re working next. You don’t know how you’re gonna feed your kids.

One of the things that people don’t understand is that a lot of actors are really blue-collar. What I mean is, you may get a job that could pay you well, but you may only have one or two jobs a year. You’re not filthy rich. And yet you don’t wanna go get a waiter job because you just did a movie or a TV show. It’s a weird life; it’s a weird existence.

But look, I learned early on to lean into being a dad. Taking my kids to school every day, picking them up, being a soccer coach, going to soccer practice every single night, those are the things that I really cherish.

The more mature I got, the more I understood that it’s my responsibility to fill my time outside of the acceptance or denial of this stupid industry. And within that, I gained my own power, and I just became wiser. I realized that waiting on Hollywood is not a way to live a life, so I filled it with other things.

Your long-running voice work as Shaggy in Scooby-Doo has been such a consistent part of your career. Did that kind of steady role bring a sense of stability for you?

The great thing about that is you would show up week after week, same day, same time, same people working in the studio. It didn’t pay a lot, but there was something about a scheduled moment where I had to show up that grounded my week, grounded my years in having a job. Growing up in the Midwest, I have a deep sense of the dignity of work. That gave me a sense of dignity about what I do, and I loved it.

Is there a role that got away? One you still wish you’d landed?

I auditioned for Negan Smith in The Walking Dead multiple times. Years later, I talked to the showrunner and he said that part was mine for about 10 minutes, because they had made the offer to Jeffrey Dean Morgan and he hadn’t accepted it yet, and they were going to offer it to me.

I just ran into Jeffrey at the Super Bowl and I was like: Dude. He was fantastic in the part and crushed it — like he is very masculine, and I would have been way more Cheshire Cat.

I recently interviewed Kelly Rowland for our sister series Unapologetically, who said, “Comparison is a trick of the enemy.” How have you navigated comparison in an industry where success can feel so relative?

I talk about it all the time in class when I teach. … I think it’s really hard for actors. I struggled with that mightily. Mightily. Little-known fact: I lived with Paul Rudd for two years. We were roommates.

I [had already] started my career, I did movies, and he had gone off and done Broadway. He’s had this incredible career, surpassing [mine] — I would have traded careers with him in a second. He’s a lovely, revered actor, but for the longest time, I was so jealous. Who you are at 21 starting in this business to who I am at 56 — it’s two totally different human beings.

So the question is, how did I get out of that? I don’t know. I think it really shifted when I started teaching and had a moment where I didn’t know how I was going to make money. My wife and I sold our house, sold our cars — we’d been going to fancy places, had a fancy school, a fancy house — and I realized I was more ego than work.

We shifted our entire life. To my wife’s credit, it was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever done in our relationship. We reconsidered what was important and how we were living. In that moment, my father-in-law suggested I could probably have a very successful career selling pharmaceuticals.

And I was like, I probably could, but I’ve been in 30 movies, and I’m an actor through and through — whether I’m teaching, onstage or doing a commercial. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. So I decided that even if I never got another chance to do a movie, I would start teaching. And it was then that I really began to understand what jealousy was, how destructive it could be and how to work my way through it.

You’re clearly in a career peak right now. How are you experiencing this moment differently than you would have earlier in your career?

Every time I talk to somebody, they’re like, “Oh my God, you’re killing it.” I’m like, yeah, but let’s be fair. This will go away soon.

The good news is, at my age, I can appreciate it a hundred times more. When I was younger, I would already be jonesing for the next thing. Right now, I’ve got so much happening and so many great things outside of just acting that I’m able to just sort of appreciate where everything’s going.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.