Home   Actors   Actresses   Supermodels  Movies  Musicians Athletes

                                            ACTORS

                      A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Link To Us

Matthew Broderick

Biography  Filmography   Links   Contact  Galleries

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.

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. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide

Filmography

Lion King 1 1/2: Hakuna Matata, The (2004) (V) .... Simba
... aka Lion King III: Hakuna Matata, The (2004) (V) (USA)
Good Boy! (2003) (voice) .... Hubble
Behind the Scenes: The Music Man (2002) (TV) .... Professor Harold Hill
Music Man, The (2002) (TV) .... Professor Harold Hill
55th Annual Tony Awards, The (2001) (TV) .... Himself/Host
You Can Count On Me: A Look Inside (2001) (V)
Recording 'The Producers': A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks (2001) (TV) .... Himself
"Jazz" (2001) (mini) TV Series (voice) .... Voices
You Can Count on Me (2000) .... Brian Everett
Walking to the Waterline (1999) .... Michael Woods
Kennedy Center Honors, The (1999) (TV) .... Himself
Inspector Gadget (1999) .... Officer John Brown/Inspector Gadget/Robo Gadget
Election (1999) .... James T. 'Jim' McAllister
Lion King II: Simba's Pride, The (1998) (V) (voice) .... King Simba the Lion (speaking)
Godzilla (1998) .... Dr. Niko Tatopoulos
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997) (TV) (voice) .... John Ordway
Addicted to Love (1997) .... Sam
... aka Forlorn (1997)
"West, The" (1996) (mini) TV Series (voice)
Infinity (1996) .... Richard Feynman
Cable Guy, The (1996) .... Steven M. Kovacs
Arabian Knight (1995) (voice) .... Tack
Would You Kindly Direct Me to Hell?: The Infamous Dorothy Parker (1994) (TV) .... Commentator
Road to Wellville, The (1994) .... William Lightbody
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) .... Charles MacArthur
... aka Mrs. Parker and the Round Table (1994)
Lion King, The (1994) (voice) .... Adult Simba the Lion
Life in the Theater, A (1993) (TV) .... John
Night We Never Met, The (1993) .... Sam Lester
Out on a Limb (1992) .... Bill Campbell
Freshman, The (1990) .... Clark Kellogg/Narrator
Glory (1989) .... Col. Robert Gould Shaw
Family Business (1989) .... Adam McMullen
Torch Song Trilogy (1988) .... Alan
Biloxi Blues (1988) .... Eugene Morris Jerome
... aka Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues (1988)
She's Having a Baby (1988) (uncredited) .... Cameo appeaance (Ferris Bueller)
Courtship (1987) .... Brother
Project X (1987) .... Jimmy Garrett
On Valentine's Day (1986) .... Brother
... aka Story of a Marriage (1986) (unifying title for "On Valentine's Day (1986" and "1918 (1985)"))
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) .... Ferris Bueller
1918 (1985) .... Brother
Master Harold and the Boys (1985) (TV) .... Master Harold 'Hally'
Ladyhawke (1985) .... Phillipe Gaston, the Mouse
WarGames (1983) .... David Lightman
Max Dugan Returns (1983) .... Michael McPhee
"Faerie Tale Theatre" (1982) TV Series .... Prince Henry (Cinderella)
... aka "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre" (1982) (USA)

Links

Contact

c/o 'The Producers'
St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St.
New York, NY 10036
USA