Matthew Broderick is an American film, stage and voice actor who, among other roles, played
the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, voice of the Adult 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.
As of 2013, 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, 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 some English, descent.
Broderick attended grade school at City and Country School and high school at Walden School.
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 gay adopted son, David,
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.
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.
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 voice of the Adult 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 Anna Gallagher, 28, accompanied by her mother, 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 March 2014, the meeting has not taken place.
In 2012, Broderick had been featured in a multi-million dollar Honda commercial aired
during the Super Bowl in which he was highlighted driving a CR-V in homage to the Ferris Bueller
movie.
Doherty was quoted as saying that Broderick "wasn't the greatest choice of drivers knowing
his past".
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, 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, having
earned his distinctions during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Work Filmography
Stage Television
References
External links Matthew Broderick at the Internet Broadway
Database Matthew Broderick at the Internet Off-Broadway
Database Matthew Broderick at the Internet Movie Database
Matthew Broderick at AllMovie "The Films of Matthew Broderick", movie clip
compilation, 4 min.
2004 Story from 60 Minutes II Matthew Broderick – Downstage Center 2004
interview at American Theatre Wing.org TonyAwards.com Interview with Matthew Broderick