Please Rewind Talent Wall

Matthew Broderick

Matthew Broderick has built a career around an unusually flexible screen presence: quick-witted and approachable in comedy, restrained in drama, and equally at home behind an animated character. Born in Manhattan on March 21, 1962, he trained at HB Studio and developed his craft onstage before becoming one of the defining young film actors of the 1980s. His early breakthrough came with WarGames in 1983, playing teenage hacker David Lightman, whose curiosity pulls him into a potentially catastrophic military crisis. Two years later, he brought comic energy to the medieval fantasy Ladyhawke as Philippe Gaston. Then came his best-known screen role: the charming, calculating title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Broderick's relaxed delivery and direct connection with the audience helped make Ferris a lasting 1980s comedy favorite. He soon showed a more serious side in Glory, portraying American Civil War officer Robert Gould Shaw alongside Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Cary Elwes. His 1990s work continued to move between tones and formats. He voiced the adult Simba in The Lion King, played Steven Kovacs opposite Jim Carrey in the dark comedy The Cable Guy, and took the role of Dr. Niko Tatopoulos in Godzilla. Broderick's film career has always run alongside substantial stage work. He won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Brighton Beach Memoirs and later won another Tony for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He also starred with Nathan Lane in the stage production of The Producers, later reprising the role of Leo Bloom in its 2005 film adaptation. Across comedy, drama, animation and theatre, Broderick's strength is often his measured quality. Even when the circumstances around his characters become enormous, he can play the person trying to think his way through them—and sometimes enjoying the trouble far more than he should.