Broderick, Matthew (b. 1960), actor. The handsome, youthful‐looking leading man possesses a vulnerable charm on stage and screen and has already given some cherished performances in New York during his young career. He was born in New York, the son of actor James Broderick, and studied acting with Uta Hagen. In 1982 he made his professional stage debut Off Broadway as the gay youth David in Torch Song Trilogy. Broderick was on Broadway the next year receiving applause for his engaging performance as the Brooklyn teenager Eugene in Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983). He returned to the same character in the sequel Biloxi Blues (1985). Broderick's other Broadway successes include the ambitious corporate climber Finch in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and the nebbish accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers (2001). In the last role, Broderick was described by Ben Brantley in the New York Times as “a slumped, adenoidal figure that . . . manages to make hunched introversion into an extroverted style.” James BRODERICK (1928–1982) was a flexible, all‐purpose actor who played both leading men and character types effectively. He was born in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and educated at the University of New Hampshire before making his New York debut in 1953. Broderick was often outstanding in short‐run plays, such as Johnny No‐Trump (1967) and Wedding Band (1972), but he was very successful on television.
Although Matthew Broderick has built a solid reputation as one of the stage and screen's more talented and steadily working individuals, he will forever be associated with the role that gave him permanent celluloid infamy, the blissfully irresponsible title hero of John Hughes's 1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Thanks to his association with the character, as well as his own boyish looks, Broderick for a long time had trouble obtaining roles that allowed him to play characters of his own age. However, with the success of films like Election (1999) and a 1994 Tony Award for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, audiences finally seemed ready to accept the fact that Broderick had indeed graduated from high school.
The son of late actor James Broderick and playwright/screenwriter Patricia Broderick, Broderick was born in New York City on March 21, 1962. With the theatre a constant backdrop to his childhood, Broderick's entrance into the entertainment world seemed a natural outcome of his upbringing. He began appearing in theatre workshops with his father when he was seventeen, and was soon acting on Broadway in plays like Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues and Brighton Beach Memoirs and Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy. Broderick played Fierstein's adopted son in Torch Song; in the Simon plays, he portrayed the playwright's alter ego, winning a Tony Award for his 1983 performance in Brighton Beach Memoirs.
The same year, Broderick made his film debut in WarGames, playing a young man who unwittingly plants the seeds of a nuclear war; the film was a success and launched the actor's onscreen career. Films like Max Dugan Returns and Ladyhawke followed, as did an acclaimed television adaptation of Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys, but it was the 1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off that made Broderick a star. As a then-23-year-old playing a 17-year-old, Broderick became a champion of smart-asses everywhere, and in so doing earned a certain kind of screen immortality. The success of the film allowed him to work steadily in films like Project X and the screen adaptations of Biloxi Blues and Torch Song Trilogy (in which Broderick now played Fierstein's lover, instead of his adopted son).
Widely publicized tragedy struck for Broderick in 1988 when he and Jennifer Grey were vacationing in Ireland: after losing control of the car he was driving, Broderick crashed into an oncoming car, killing the mother and daughter in it. The actor was hospitalized, and his ensuing legal problems were the subject of much media scrutiny. However, he continued to work, winning critical acclaim for his portrayal of a Civil War colonel in the 1989 Glory. He then kicked off the 1990s with the title role of a naive film student in The Freshman; following that film's relative success, he starred in the poorly received comedy The Night We Never Met, and in 1994, he was cast against type as one of Dorothy Parker's unsympathetic lovers in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. That same year, he ventured back to Broadway, where he found acclaim as the lead in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
Over the next few years, Broderick had his hits (The Lion King) and misses (The Road to Wellville, The Cable Guy, Addicted to Love). In 1996, he made his directorial debut with Infinity, which also featured a screenplay by his mother. A love story based on the life of famed physicist Richard Feynman, the film made a brief blip on the box-office radar, although it did garner some positive reviews. In 1997 he wed actress Sarah Jessica Parker who gave birth to their son, James Wilke Broderick, in October of 2002.
The same couldn't be said for Broderick's massively budgeted, hyper-marketed 1998 feature, Godzilla. The subject of critical abuse and audience evasion, the film was a disappointment. Fortunately for Broderick, his role as the film's hero was largely ignored by critics who preferred to level their attacks at the film's content. The actor managed to rebound successfully the following year, first playing against type as a high-school teacher caught up in an ethical conundrum in Alexander Payne's hilarious satire Election. The film received positive reviews, with many critics praising Broderick's performance as the morally ambiguous Mr. McAllister. The actor then could be seen as the title character in the giddy action flick Inspector Gadget. It was a role that would have made Ferris Bueller proud: not only did Broderick get to shoot flames from his limbs and sprout helicopter blades from his skull, he also got to defeat the bad guys and, in the end, get the girl.
In 2000, Broderick played a supporting role in Kenneth Lonergan's critically acclaimed You Can Count On Me with Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and appeared in a well received television adaptation of The Music Man later that year. Broderick lent his vocal chords for both 2003's The Good Boy and 2004's The Lion King 1/2, and signed on to appear in three hotly anticipated 2004 films; namely, The Last Shot with William H. Macy, Tom Cairns' black comedy Marie and Bruce, and The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, and Bette Midler. Of course, Broderick's biggest achievement of the 2000's was not on the silver screen, but on stage with Nathan Lane in Mel Brooks' hugely successful comedy The Producers, which won a record 12 Tony awards in 2001. He reprised the role for a film adaptation in 2005, with Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman joining the cast.
2006 found the actor appearing in the big screen adaptation of Strangers with Candy, as well as the drama Margaret and the holiday comedy Deck the Halls. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
Broderick's first major acting role came in an HB Studio workshop production of playwright Horton Foote's On Valentine's Day, playing opposite his father, who was a friend of Foote's. This was followed by a supporting role as Harvey Fierstein's adopted son in the Off-Broadway production of Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy; then, a good review by The New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow brought him to the attention of Broadway. Broderick commented on the effects of that review in a 2004 60 Minutes II interview:
Before I knew it, I was like this guy in a hot play. And suddenly, all these doors opened. And it’s only because Mel Gussow happened to come by right before it closed and happened to like it. It’s just amazing. All these things have to line up that are out of your control.
He followed that with the role of Eugene Morris Jerome in the Neil SimonEugene Trilogy including the plays, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues. His first film role was also written by Neil Simon. Broderick debuted in Max Dugan Returns (1983). His first big hit film was WarGames, a summer hit in 1983 he played the main role of David Lightman, a Seattle teen hacker. This was followed by the role of Philippe Gaston in Ladyhawke, in 1985.
Broderick then got the role as the charming, clever slacker in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. At age 23, Broderick played a high-school student who, with his girlfriend and best friend, plays hooky and explores Chicago. The film remains a 1980s comedy favorite today and is one of Broderick's best-known roles (particularly with teenage audiences). Also in 1987, he played an air force troop pilot Jimmy Garrett in Project X. In 1988 Broderick played Harvey Fierstein's gay lover, Alan, in the screen adaptation of Torch Song Trilogy. In the 1989 film Glory, he received good reviews for his portrayal of the American Civil War officer Robert Gould Shaw.
In the 1990s, Broderick voiced the adult lion, Simba, in the successful animated film The Lion King, and also voiced Tack the Cobbler in Miramax's controversial version of The Thief and the Cobbler, which had originally been intended as a silent role. He won recognition for two dark-comedy roles. The first was that of a bachelor in The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey. The second was that of a high-school teacher in Alexander Payne's Election with Reese Witherspoon.
Broderick returned to Broadway as a musical star in the 1990s, most notably with his Tony Award–winning performance in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and his Tony Award–nominated performance in the Mel Brooks' stage version of The Producers in 2001. He continued to make feature films, including the 2005 adaptation of The Producers. Broderick played the role of Leopold “Leo” Bloom, an accountant who co-produces a musical designed to fail, but which turns out to be successful.
Broderick with Sanaa Lathan at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Wonderful World.
He has won two Tony Awards, one in 1983 for his featured role in the play Brighton Beach Memoirs and one in 1995 for his leading role in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He was also nominated for the Tony Award, Best Actor in a Musical, for The Producers but lost to Lane. To date, Matthew Broderick is the youngest winner of the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Parker and Broderick have a son, James Wilkie Broderick, born on October 28, 2002. On April 28, 2009, it was confirmed that Broderick and Parker were expecting twin girls through surrogacy.[13] Broderick and Parker's surrogate delivered their twin daughters, Marion Loretta Elwell and Tabitha Hodge, on June 22, 2009.[14][15]
Although they live in New York City, they spend a considerable amount of time at their holiday home near Kilcar, a village in County Donegal, Ireland, where Broderick spent his summers as a child. They also have a house in The Hamptons.[16]
Car accident
On August 5, 1987, Broderick was in a car accident in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, while vacationing with Jennifer Grey, whom he began dating in semi-secrecy during the filming of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The accident, which was the event through which their relationship became public, occurred when the rented BMW Broderick was driving crossed into the wrong lane and slammed head-on into a Volvo driven by a local mother and daughter, Anna Gallagher 28, and Margaret Doherty 63, who were killed instantly in the accident. Broderick suffered a broken leg, while Grey received minor injuries, including, severe whiplash. Broderick told authorities he had no recollection of the crash and did not know why he was in the wrong lane. "I don't remember the day. I don't remember even getting up in the morning. I don't remember making my bed. What I first remember is waking up in the hospital, with a very strange feeling going on in my leg," he said at the time. Broderick was charged with causing death by dangerous driving and faced up to five years behind bars, but was later convicted of the lesser charge of careless driving and fined $175, which the victims' family called "a travesty of justice." Martin Doherty, whose wife and daughter were killed in the crash, later stated that he forgave Broderick, amid plans to meet with Broderick in 2003 , in order to gain a sense of closure.[17][18][19][20]
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