Vince Vaughn wanted to ''kill off'' his romantic comedy persona.

The 45-year-old actor enjoyed working on ''smart and cool'' comedies, but admits as his career progressed, he got ''sucked into'' more mainstream movies.

He said: ''I wanted to kill that guy off. I was very defiant right up until I did 'Old School' [in 2003].

''Things like 'Dodgeball' and 'Wedding Crashers', these things were smart and cool. I thought they were badass. And the characters were appealing.

''It felt like we were kind of doing rock'n'roll back then. I felt good about those movies.

''It was after I had written 'Couples Retreat' and I wanted to bring that character as far as I could, bring him to his knees and then knock the romantic comedies on the head.

''[But] you kind of get sucked onto a sort of conveyer belt. It's the cliché but it's true. I started doing what I would call assembly line comedies where there wasn't a filmmaker or someone like Jon Favreau whom I could bounce off.''

And the 'True Detective' star takes full responsibility for getting ''idle'' with his career.

He added to Britain's GQ magazine: ''I'm not blaming anyone else but myself here. The machine can make you idle. You read a script and then you agree to a role, then soon enough you're on set looking at a scene that has had all the juice and the life sucked right out of it.

''You become a hired gun doing a very inoffensive PG-13 movie and, well, you kind of just go along with it. Like anything in life you're either growing or you're dying. When you get too comfortable you start to decline.''