Matthew Broderick Biography

Matthew Broderick (born March 21, 1962) is an American film, stage and voice actor who, among other roles, played the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, voiced Simba in The Lion King, and portrayed Leo Bloom in the Hollywood and Broadway productions of The Producers.

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 his co-star Nathan Lane. , Broderick is the youngest winner of the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

Early life and education

Broderick was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, the son of Patricia (née Biow), a playwright, actress, and painter, and James Joseph Broderick III, an actor and World War II veteran. His mother was Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Germany and Poland. His father was a Catholic of Irish and English descent. Broderick attended grade school at City and Country School (a progressive K"8 school in Manhattan) and high school at Walden School (a defunct private school in Manhattan with a strong drama program).

Career

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 Simon Eugene 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, in which 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 the 1986 movie 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 Air Force research assistant 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, whom Broderick incidentally physically resembled at the time.

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 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 appeared on Broadway as a college professor in The Philanthropist, running April 10 through June 28, 2009.

He returned to the Broadway stage in Spring 2012 to star in the musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.

Awards

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.

Personal life

Family

Broderick met actress Sarah Jessica Parker through her brother. The couple married on May 19, 1997 in a civil ceremony in a historic deconsecrated synagogue on the Lower East Side. Although Broderick considers himself culturally Jewish, the ceremony was performed by his sister, Janet Broderick Kraft, an Episcopal priest.

Parker and Broderick have a son, James Wilkie Broderick, born in 2002. In April 2009, it was confirmed that Broderick and Parker were expecting twin girls through surrogacy. Broderick and Parker's surrogate delivered their twin daughters, Marion Loretta Elwell and Tabitha Hodge, in 2009.

Although they live in Manhattan, 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.

Fatal car accident

On August 5, 1987, Broderick was in a car accident in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, while vacationing with Jennifer Grey, whom he had begun 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 collided head-on with 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 fractured leg, fractured ribs, a concussion, and a collapsed lung. 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 in prison, 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 sister and mother 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. As of August 2013, the meeting has not taken place.

Family history

In March 2010, Broderick was featured in the US version of the BBC program Who Do You Think You Are?. Broderick stated that his participation in the ancestry research program emotionally reconnected him with the role he played in Glory twenty-two years earlier, as he discovered a paternal great-great-grandfather, Robert Martindale (incidentally sharing the same prenom as his Glory character), who actually was a Union soldier. A veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg, Martindale, who belonged to the 20th Connecticut, was killed in the aftermath of the Battle of Atlanta, and was eventually interred in an unnamed grave at the Marietta National Cemetery. Having identified the grave with the help of historian Brad Quinlin, Broderick's research enabled him to give his ancestor his name back. In the same program Broderick discovered that his paternal grandfather, James Joseph Broderick II, whom he had never known, had been a highly decorated combat medic in World War I, he having earned his distinctions during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

Work

Filmography

Film
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	Max Dugan Returns	Michael McPhee
	WarGames	David Lightman	Nominated "? Saturn Award for Best Actor
1985	1918	Brother
	Faerie Tale Theatre	Prince Henry	TV Series: 1 Episode
	Master Harold...and the Boys	Harold "Hally"	Nominated "? CableACE Award for Actor in a Theatrical or Dramatic Special
	Ladyhawke	Philippe Gaston
1986	Ferris Bueller's Day Off	Ferris Bueller	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
	On Valentine's Day	Brother
1987	Project X	James "Jimmy" Garrett
1988	Biloxi Blues	Eugene Morris Jerome
	Torch Song Trilogy	Alan Simon
1989	Family Business	Adam McMullen
	Glory	Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
1990	The Freshman	Clark Kellogg / The Narrator
1992	Out on a Limb	William "Bill" Campbell
1993	The Night We Never Met	Samuel "Sam" Lester
	A Life in the Theatre	John	Nominated "? Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
1994	The Lion King	Adult Simba	Voice Only
	Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle	Charles MacArthur
	The Road to Wellville	William "Will" Lightbody
1995	Arabian Knight	Tack the Cobbler	Voice Only
1996	The Cable Guy	Steven M. Kovacs	Nominated "? MTV Movie Award for Best Fight (against Jim Carrey)
	Infinity	Richard Feynman	Also Producer/Director
1997	Addicted to Love	Sam
1998	Godzilla	Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos
	The Lion King II: Simba's Pride	King Simba	Voice Only Direct-To-DVD
	Walking to the Waterline	Michael Woods
1999	Election	James "Jim" McAllister	Nominated "? Chlotrudis Award for Best Actor
	Inspector Gadget	Inspector Gadget /John Brown/ Robo-Gadget
2000	You Can Count on Me	Brian Everett
2003	The Music Man	Professor Harold Hill	TV
	Good Boy!	Hubble	Voice Only
2004	The Lion King 1½	Simba (teenager and adult)	Voice Only Direct-To-DVD
	Marie and Bruce	Bruce
	The Stepford Wives	Walter Kresby
	The Last Shot	Steven Schats
2005	The Producers	Leopold "Leo" Bloom
	Strangers with Candy	Roger Beekman
2006	Deck the Halls	Steven "Steve" Finch
2007	Then She Found Me	Benjamin "Ben" Green
	Bee Movie	Adam Flayman	Voice Only
2008	Diminished Capacity	Cooper Kennedy
	Finding Amanda	Taylor Peters Mendon	Nominated "? Prism Award for Performance in a Feature Film
	The Tale of Despereaux	Despereaux	Voice Only
2010	Wonderful World	Benjamin "Ben" Singer
	Beach Lane	Mike Brennan	TV
2011	Margaret	John Van Tassel
	Tower Heist	Mr. Fitzhugh
	New Year's Eve	Mr. Buellerton	Uncredited
2013	Skum Rocks!
2014	Pompeii	Nimtorus

Stage

Stage
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1981	Torch Song Trilogy	David
1983	Brighton Beach Memoirs	Eugene Jerome
1985	Biloxi Blues
1995	How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying	J. Pierrepont Finch
1999	Night Must Fall	Dan
2000	Taller Than a Dwarf	'Howard Miller
2001"2002, 2003	The Producers	Leopold "Leo" Bloom
2002	Short Talks on the Universe
2004	The Foreigner	Charlie Baker
2005	The Odd Couple	Felix Unger
2009	The Philanthropist	Phillip
	The Starry Messenger	Mark
2012"2013	Nice Work If You Can Get It	Jimmy Winter	Television Television Year Title Role Notes 1981 Lou Grant Episode: "Generations" 1985 Faerie Tale Theatre Episode: "Cinderella" "Master Harold"...and the Boys 1993 A Life in the Theater (1993) 1995 Frasier Episode: "She's the Boss" 1997 Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery 2003 The Music Man (2003) 2008 30 Rock Cooter Burger Episode: "Cooter" 2009 Cyberchase Episode: "Father's Day" 2010 Who Do You Think You Are? Louie Himself Episode: "Heckler/Cop Movie" Beach Lane TV Pilot 2012 Adventure Time The Dream Warrior Episode: "Who would Win?" 30 Rock Cooter Burger Episode: "Governor Dunston" Modern Family Dave Episode: "Mistery Date"