Best Known As: Ferris in the movie Ferris Beuller's Day Off
Long known to movie fans as sneaky-smart truant Ferris Beuller, Matthew Broderick is also one of Broadway's most dependable stars. Born to an actor father and playwright mother, Broderick began making a name for himself in hit Broadway plays such as Brighton Beach Memoirs (for which he won a 1983 Tony award) and Biloxi Blues. His movie debut came in 1983's Max Dugan Returns, but it was the 1986 teens-on-the-loose comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off that made him a star. Broderick worked in movies and on stage throughout the 1990s, appearing in films such as The Lion King (1994, as the voice of Simba) and Election (1999, with Reese Witherspoon), and winning another Tony award in 1995 for How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He made his film directing debut in 1996 with Infinity, and he married actress Sarah Jessica Parker in 1997. In 2001 he had another Broadway success as Leo Bloom in the Mel Brooks musical The Producers.
Broderick's father was actor James Broderick, known to TV audiences as the father in the old ABC series Family (1976-80)...Ferris Bueller's Day Off was turned into a bad TV series in 1990, but without Broderick: it starred Charlie Schlatter as Ferris and Jennifer Aniston as his sister, Jeannie.
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.
Career Highlights: Election, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Lion King
First Major Screen Credit: Max Dugan Returns (1983)
Biography
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, All Movie Guide
Broderick was born in New York City, the son of actor James Wilke Broderick and Patricia (née Biow),[1] a playwright, actress and painter whose work was posthumously
shown at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in New York.[2]
Broderick's mother was Jewish[3] and his father a Catholic[4] of Irish descent.[5] Broderick attended grade school at the City & Country School, a progressive K–8 school in
Manhattan; and high school at Walden School (now closed), a private school in Manhattan with a
strong drama program.
Career
Broderick's first major acting role came in a role in an HB Studio workshop production of playwright Horton Foote's On Valentine's Day, playing opposite his father James, who was a friend of Foote's.
This was followed by a lead role in the off-Broadway production of Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy; a good review
by New York Times theater critic Mel
Gussow brought him to the attention of Broadway. Broderick commented on the
effects of that review in a 200460 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 two Neil Simon plays:
Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi
Blues, both plays are part of what is known as the "Eugene Trilogy" . His
first movie 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. Broderick auditioned for the role of Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom
Family Ties and was offered the role, but he had to turn it down because of his movie
schedule. Broderick then got the role as the charming, clever slacker in Ferris
Bueller's Day Off. Broderick, who in real life was in his mid 20s, played a high school student who, with his
girlfriend and best friend, plays hooky and explores Chicago while avoiding the clutches
of the dean of students, who is eager to catch Bueller in the act. The movie remains an 80s comedy favorite today. In 1989's
Glory Broderick received good notices for his portrayal of the American Civil War hero Robert Gould Shaw in a script
largely written by his mother.
Broderick in the 1990s took on his famous role as the adult lion, Simba in the spectacularly
successful animated film, The Lion King.
Furthermore, he distinguished himself in two dark comedy roles. The first was that of a bachelor who attracts the friendship of
an insane and lonely cable repairman (played by Jim Carrey) in The Cable Guy. The second was that of an Omaha high school teacher determined to stop an overachieving
student (played by Reese Witherspoon) from becoming class president in Alexander
Payne's Election. Election had also been a coming-of-age role for
Broderick; his fans from Ferris Bueller's Day Off noted that where Broderick played a popular student who took an
easygoing approach to school, in Election he played a popular teacher who is trying to convince students there is more to
education than simply grades and looking good for college admission boards.
Broderick returned to Broadway as a musical star in the 1990s, most notably 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 also continues 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. In “The Producers” Broderick sings several songs, both alone and with other characters.
Broderick reunited with his co-star from The Lion King and The Producers, Nathan Lane, in The Odd Couple, which opened on Broadway in October 2005. 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 Producers, but lost to co-star Nathan Lane.
Personal life
Broderick met actress Jennifer Grey on the set of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In 1987, Broderick was involved in a multi-car collision while
driving in Ireland with Grey (his fiancée at the time). The collision killed a woman and her
daughter. Broderick (who fractured his leg and a rib) was cleared of all charges but paid a fee of $175 to the victims' family.
Drinking was not involved in the crash. Martin Doherty, the elder victim's son, was quoted by Bill Hoffman in 2002 saying "I
would like to reassure him that there are no bad feelings from us." The accident occurred close to the US release of Ferris
Bueller's Day Off.[6]
Broderick met actress Sarah Jessica Parker through her brother. The couple were
married on May 19, 1997 in a civil
ceremony in a historic deconsecrated synagogue on the Lower East Side; and while
Broderick considers himself Jewish,[7][8] the ceremony was performed by his sister, the Reverend Janet Broderick
Kraft, an Episcopalpriest.[9]
Parker and Broderick's first child, James Wilkie Broderick (born on October 28,
2002), is named after his grandfather James Brian Broderick. His middle name is that of author
Wilkie Collins, an author Broderick and Parker greatly admire. They spend a considerable
amount of time at their holiday home in County Donegal, Ireland where Broderick spent his summers as a child.
He is left-handed, a fact made evident already in his first movie, Max Dugan Returns, where he is playing baseball. Broderick is an avid baseball fan. His favorite
team is the New York Mets.
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