November 10, 2000

Friend Finds He Can Count on Broderick

By Serena Kappes, People.com

Over a decade has passed since Ferris Bueller lip-synched "Twist and Shout" on a parade float, but it's hard to forget the scheming teenager Matthew Broderick brought to life in 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yet seated in a suite at The Regency Hotel in New York City, it's clear the 38-year-old actor is all grown up -- and far more serious than the impish character who helped him rise to fame. Graying temples frame his still-boyish face and, dressed in a forest-green sweater and brown corduroy pants, he seems more like a college professor than a Hollywood star.

Broderick's scholarly demeanor befits a performer who's always been low-key about his celebrity -- and choosy about his roles. Though he's appeared in big-budget movies like 1999's Inspector Gadget and 1998's box office disappointment Godzilla, he's spent much of his time on Broadway and in offbeat roles in films like 1999's Election. His latest contribution to the silver screen is also more subdued: Broderick is a supporting player in You Can Count On Me, an independent drama about a sister and brother played with aching truthfulness by The Truman Show's Laura Linney and 54's Mark Ruffalo, and written and directed by Broderick's childhood friend Kenneth Lonergan.

Broderick and Lonergan (who also has a cameo in the movie) have known each other since their days attending high school at New York City's Walden School. "We've been friends ever since," Broderick says. "When he writes, very often I will do a reading. We've had other close calls but this is the first time we've gotten to really work together."

In You Can Count On Me (a co-winner of the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival), Broderick plays an uptight bank manager in a sleepy upstate New York town. The actor jokingly describes his character as "the king of nothing."

"He's got a lot of problems in his life and the way he nitpicks on everybody's stuff rather than to look to himself is something I can sympathize with," he says wryly. "I just thought it was an interesting role."

And he was so intent on doing it, Broderick juggled performing on Broadway in Night Must Fall with filming the movie in Phoenicia, N.Y., in 1999. "The Sunday show [of Night] would end at around five or six and I would get in a van and drive out to wherever [the movie was filming], sleep and wake up at 6 and shoot, go to sleep and shoot. Then I'd get back in a van and do the play that night."

That's the kind of schedule that Broderick says is the toughest part of his two-year marriage to fellow actor Sarah Jessica Parker, 35 (Sex and the City). The couple, who've been together since 1992, were married in May 1997 in New York City by Broderick's sister, Rev. Janet Broderick Kraft. They share a Greenwich Village townhouse with their mixed-breed border collie, Sally. Though both actors are on hiatus at the moment, Broderick says it's hard -- but worth it -- balancing the careers.

Juggling a two-career marriage

"I seem to be doing a play whenever she's doing her show. I come in at night nearly when she's ready to leave," he explains. "Like any other marriage, it's easy to not bother to make any time to be alone. I think you really have to do that."

Parker agrees that it's difficult, but not impossible, walking the two-career tightrope. "Sure, you worry if your relationship is getting enough attention," she told PEOPLE in 1996. "Our life is not more complicated than a lot of couples' in America. People work two jobs. It's a little hard, but it's not unmanageable by any stretch."

When they are together, Parker and Broderick have a lot in common, including their fanaticism for baseball (they were a fixture at the 2000 World Series) and checking out the New York theater scene. The couple even starred on Broadway together in 1996 in the revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which earned Broderick a Tony.

A life on the stage seems to be ingrained in Broderick's DNA. He's the son of playwright Patricia and actor James (TV's Family), who passed away from cancer in 1982. "I watched him from the time I was very little -- my education about acting mostly came from watching him," Broderick says lovingly. "I always liked to be backstage with him. But I didn't really want to be an actor until I got pretty well into high school. I was very frightened of it."

Shyness almost changed his career

His shyness about being in the spotlight almost kept him from pursuing acting (careers as a stage manager or set designer were possibilities) but, after appearing with his dad in a workshop production when he was 17, Broderick was hooked.

Soon he catapulted to Broadway stardom in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs (for which he scored his first Tony). Mainstream success in 1983's War Games followed, though Broderick turned down the role Michael J. Fox rode to fame in the sitcom Family Ties because he didn't want to relocate to Los Angeles while his dad was ill in New York. Suddenly, he was a household name.

And the place he first found inspiration as a little boy -- the theater -- continues to inspire him: For the next year, Broderick will be busy doing a stage production of The Producers (co-starring Nathan Lane) and making a TV version of the Broadway musical The Music Man. Does he have a preference for film or stage?

"I get sick of one and I always want to do the other," Broderick says. "The pleasure in a play is a real feeling of achievement that you feel like you've had a chance to do everything in your power to make something work. Movies can be very nice because they're quiet and intimate. I get pleasure -- when they're good -- from both of them."