Matthew Broderick

The Full Biography

Matthew Broderick. Actor. The Manhattan theater son who made a day off into a civic object, then spent the rest of a life going back to a stage the magazines had already left.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a boy in a sweater vest, talking to the camera from a Chicago bedroom, promising that a day can be seized if you ignore the bell. The year was 1986. The picture was John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The carpe diem is the picture. It is not a speech he gave in life. What the still cannot show is Matthew Broderick of Manhattan, a father who acted, a mother who painted and wrote plays, a Tony at twenty-one, a second Tony for a musical that was not The Producers, and a living man who is still, more often than a magazine cover, in a rehearsal room.

He was born on March 21, 1962, in Manhattan, the son of James Broderick, the actor audiences knew from Family and from serious film work, and Patricia Biow Broderick, a playwright and painter. The household was the theater, not a visit to it. He went to City and Country School and the Walden School. He trained at HB Studio. The first pressure was a gifted, watchful boy in a family that already knew what an entrance cost. His professional door opened beside his father, in a Horton Foote workshop piece, On Valentine’s Day. Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, off-Broadway, put him in front of the people who write the next invitation. A New York Times notice did what those notices sometimes still do. The town looked up.

Neil Simon wrote him Eugene Morris Jerome. Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) made him a Broadway leading juvenile and won him the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He remains the youngest winner of that prize. Biloxi Blues followed on stage and then on film. The same year as Brighton Beach, WarGames put him in a suburban bedroom with a modem and a NORAD that thought a game was a war. That is the first film the country kept. Max Dugan Returns, also 1983, also Simon, was the quieter first picture. Ladyhawke (1985) put him in armor and charm beside Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. Then Hughes handed him Ferris.

He was twenty-three, playing a high-school senior, and the camera loved the conspiracy he made with the audience. A Ferrari. An art museum. A parade. A principal who will not rest. The picture became a civic object for people who were not yet born when it opened. It is a comedy. It is also a weather: the American idea that a Thursday can be stolen if you are charming enough. He has never been only that boy. The culture has often asked him to remain one. The same year as WarGames, Mel Brooks’s remake of To Be or Not to Be put him beside Brooks and Anne Bancroft as a Polish flier, a first film education in farce from people who already knew the cost of a joke.

Project X (1987). Biloxi Blues (1988) brought Eugene Jerome from the stage to the screen. Family Business (1989) put him with Sean Connery and Dustin Hoffman. Glory (1989), as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, opposite Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, was a Civil War part he physically resembled and did not treat as a costume. The Freshman (1990) sat him across from Marlon Brando in a comedy that knew it was quoting The Godfather. The Lion King (1994) hired the adult voice of Simba, a generation’s other memory of him. The Cable Guy (1996). Godzilla (1998) and Inspector Gadget (1999) are the paychecks the still prefers to skip. Election (1999), for Alexander Payne, as a teacher who is not as decent as he needs to be — the adult correction to Ferris, if anyone wanted one. Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me (2000) used him as a small-town bank manager with a private life that did not survive the frame. On stage, in 1995, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying won him the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical. That is the second statue. In 2001 Mel Brooks’s The Producers put him on Broadway as Leo Bloom, the accountant, opposite Nathan Lane’s Max Bialystock. The show took twelve Tonys. Lane took Best Actor. Broderick was nominated. The film, in 2005, brought the same pairing back. The civic Broadway object is Bloom and Bialystock together. The file should not swap the hats.

On August 5, 1987, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, he was driving a rented car near Enniskillen, on the wrong side of the road, and crossed into the other lane. Anna Gallagher, twenty-eight, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, sixty-three, died in the collision. Jennifer Grey was the passenger. He was convicted of careless driving and fined. That is the fact. The work went on. The names stay in the file.

The turn is not Ferris. The turn is the decision, after the country had hired him as a day off, to keep the theater as the real shop. A lot of 1980s faces become residencies of a single still. He became a New York actor who would take the film when it was good or necessary and go back to a rehearsal when the film was over. Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, off-Broadway, had already put him in front of the people who write the next invitation. Neil Simon wrote him Eugene Morris Jerome twice: Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1983, then Biloxi Blues on stage and on film. The Odd Couple with Lane. Nice Work If You Can Get It. Plaza Suite, in 2022, opposite Sarah Jessica Parker, the marriage taken on the road as a play. He is still more often on a stage than on a magazine. That is not a decline. It is the family trade, continued.

The Hughes picture still needs the specific work named. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a Thursday in Chicago: a Ferrari, the Art Institute, a parade on South Dearborn, a principal named Ed Rooney who will not rest. Broderick was twenty-three, playing a senior, and the camera loved the conspiracy he made with the audience. WarGames, three years earlier, is David Lightman in a Seattle-area bedroom with a modem and a NORAD that thought a game was a war — John Badham’s picture, Ally Sheedy in the other chair, a first film the country kept. Glory is Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts, filmed in part at Gettysburg and on the Georgia coast, a part he physically resembled and did not treat as a costume. Those three pictures are the public file. The two Tonys are the private one the magazines skip. Eugene Jerome at twenty-one. J. Pierrepont Finch in 1995. Leo Bloom beside Lane in 2001, a nomination, not a third statue. The hats are not interchangeable. The West Village is the address. Donegal is the summer house. Fermanagh is the 1987 road.

City and Country School. The Walden School. HB Studio. Horton Foote’s On Valentine’s Day beside James Broderick. A New York Times notice after Torch Song. That is the door, not a sweater vest. Max Dugan Returns (1983), also Simon, was the quieter first picture. Ladyhawke (1985) put him in armor beside Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. Project X (1987) used chimpanzees and a military plot the still skips. On August 5, 1987, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, near Enniskillen, he was driving a rented car on the wrong side of the road. Anna Gallagher, twenty-eight, and her mother, Margaret Doherty, sixty-three, died in the collision. Jennifer Grey was the passenger. He was convicted of careless driving and fined. The names stay in the file. The work went on because the work is what he knew how to do, not because the file was clean. Manhattan is the first room. The theater kitchen is the first shop. Ferris is the civic object. Fermanagh is the sentence the file will not clean. The two Tonys are the statues. The rehearsal is what he went back to.

James Broderick acted. Patricia Biow Broderick painted and wrote plays. The son inherited the shop, not a visit to it. Brighton Beach made him the youngest Featured Actor in a Play. How to Succeed made him a musical lead the town had to write down. The Producers made him Leo Bloom beside Nathan Lane, a civic pairing, a nomination, not a third Tony. Ferris remains the clip. The rehearsal remains the job. Fermanagh remains in the file. Those four sentences are the life.

He married Sarah Jessica Parker on May 19, 1997. They have a son, James Wilkie, and twin daughters, Marion and Tabitha, born through surrogacy. The marriage has been a New York fact for nearly three decades, which is rarer in the trade than a hit. Friends from the early Foote rooms describe a professional who is first on his mark and done with a false line. The children have had to share a father who is also a day off strangers still quote in airports. Both the quiet and the quote are the life.

The later years

Home is the West Village, a New York address that is also the family trade continued. Sarah Jessica Parker is the household, the marriage of May 19, 1997. James Wilkie and the twins, Marion and Tabitha, are the children who have had to share a father strangers still quote in airports. There is a summer house in County Donegal. It is not the 1987 road. The 1987 road is County Fermanagh, near Enniskillen, and the names on it remain Anna Gallagher and Margaret Doherty. He has not asked the file to forget them. He has gone back to rehearsal rooms instead.

He directed himself as Richard Feynman in Infinity (1996). Lonergan’s Margaret (2011) used him as a teacher again, in a New York that was not a day off. Tower Heist (2011) and Trainwreck (2015) are the comedies a famous face still gets offered. He took television when the part had a barb — Richard Sackler in Painkiller, a guest run on Only Murders in the Building that brought an Emmy nomination. Those jobs are the shop continuing. They are not a fade.

He is in his sixties. He still opens a play as if the first night were Brighton Beach and the notice had not yet been written. The sweater vest remains the clip. The two Tonys — Eugene Jerome at twenty-one, J. Pierrepont Finch in 1995 — are the statues. Leo Bloom is the civic pairing, not a third Tony. The rehearsal is the parish. Manhattan is the first room and the last address. James Broderick and Patricia Biow Broderick are the first shop. He has not agreed to remain a Thursday. He has agreed to keep learning lines.

After the spotlight moved

It moved to the next charming boy, then to a generation that met Ferris on a cable afternoon, and then it came back every June when a school year ended and someone needed a parade. Hughes still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right still. Simon, Lane, Shaw, and Bloom are the correction. Parker is the household. The stage is the parish.

He came out of a Manhattan theater kitchen, won a Tony before he could rent a car in some states, hacked a film into a hit, stole a Thursday for John Hughes, drove into a collision the file will not clean, played a colonel and a cowardly accountant and a failing teacher, married a famous woman and kept the work anyway, and is still, in his sixties, learning lines. If you only remember the sweater vest, you have the picture. If you remember James and Patricia, the two Tonys, Fermanagh, and a man who went back to the stage, you have him.

Portrait: David Shankbone · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Matthew Broderick · Full Biography · 50 Plus Hub
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