Matthew Broderick - Articles: 2004

Matthew Broderick: From Here To Infinity

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

Ferris Bueller's payoff

Broderick learns to accept role that made him famous

But early success hasn't rid him of many insecurities

By Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star

Ferris Bueller never gets a day off.

Matthew Broderick is trying to unwind in his hotel room after a press conference for his latest movie, The Stepford Wives, which opens Friday.

Even at 42, he radiates the perpetually adolescent charm that made audiences fall in love with him 18 years ago, when he created the title character in John Hughes's hit film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It's a role he can't escape.

"When I leave here today," he starts, "I promise you that four or five times people will come up to me on the street and tell me how much they love Ferris. They never say it about anything else. They ask, `You know what movie of yours I like the best?' and I have to pretend I don't know what they're going to say."

He offers a half-smile. "I'm a little more comfortable with it now because I've done over 20 films since then, but back at the time it worried me that people identified with it so much. I had a whole life ahead of me and a career I wanted to last, so I was always a little bit afraid."

It's hard to think of the present-day Broderick as having anything to fear. Not only does he have a leading role opposite Nicole Kidman, but he's still carries the buzz of his legendary collaboration with Nathan Lane on Broadway in The Producers, and his personal life includes fatherhood and a successful marriage to Sex And The City icon Sarah Jessica Parker.

Yet, the insecurities bubble, just beneath the surface.

In The Stepford Wives, Broderick plays a man living in the shadow of his successful, attractive wife. Did that remind him of his relationship with Parker?

He stammers a bit. "It didn't really occur to me, because, of course, I don't notice the most obvious things until they're staring me in the face. But I can see that in some surface way it does. Yes, Sarah Jessica is a very driven, strong woman, but it's only part of the time that I feel like Norman Maine."

Broderick invoked the name of the character played by James Mason in A Star Is Born, who trashes his life when his wife's career surpasses his.

"I've always felt about an inch away from Norman Maine. I even have a friend that I have an e-mail relationship with that I call Libby, just like the press guy in the movie who kicks poor Norman when he's down.

"Sure, I relate to Norman, but then I always have. My career is currently going really well so I don't feel totally like him. My rational brain tells me I'm not lying around in a bathtub at the funny farm yet, but the fear is always lurking."

I ask why he puts himself down so much, and his answer is surprisingly candid. "I like hearing people say, `How could you say those things about yourself? You're a genius!'" A Cheshire Cat grin. "It makes me happy, trying to drag that out of people. Besides, I grew up on that kind of humour."

Broderick often throws away the most telling remark at the end of an answer and this was no exception, because to understand the man, you have to go back to the boy.

"I've always had strong women around me," he begins. "I grew up with two very strong sisters and a very strong mom. I was afraid of them, as we all should be, but not so afraid of them that I didn't like them a lot."

He grew up in Manhattan, the son of James and Patricia Broderick. His father was a well-regarded stage and screen actor, who never broke through to stardom, and his mother was a playwright and painter whose career followed the same arc.

Matthew went to the elite Walden School and was interested in football and soccer until a knee injury sent him into theatre. "My first part was Snout in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the guy who plays the wall." He flashes a mock-earnest look. "It remains my most impressive acting achievement to date."

By the time he was 19, Broderick had made a splash off-Broadway opposite Harvey Fierstein in the controversial Torch Song Trilogy, and then came the defining year of his life.

"On my 20th birthday I was on a plane to L.A. to do my first movie, Max Dugan Returns, and then I went right on to War Games and the play of Brighton Beach Memoirs, which started its tryout in California. And in the middle of the year, my father died of cancer.

"Then, on my 21st birthday I was on the plane again heading back to N.Y. to open Brighton Beach, I remember thinking, `I came to L.A. on one birthday and I'm going back to N.Y. on the next.' That's the kind of thing a kid remembers.

"In one year, I suddenly had this career, which I never thought I was going to have, and no father, which I never imagined was possible."

He stops, visibly moved by his memories and drinks some water to steady himself. When he speaks again, there's a harder edge to his voice than before.

"I don't know what happens to a person who goes through all of that in one year ... but whatever it is, you're looking at it."

Four years later, he faced another crisis when he and his then-fiancée Jennifer Grey were involved in a car crash in Ireland, which claimed the life of two women in the vehicle that Broderick hit. He was later acquitted of any fault in the accident; still — as he told 60 Minutes last year — "it kills me to think to about it, but I can't undo it."

His film career since has been a wild mixture of classy hits (Glory) and trashy flops (Godzilla), but he happily concedes his professional high point in recent years was playing Leo Bloom in the mega-hit musical The Producers.

"It's the most fun I've ever had anywhere," he sighs. "Mel Brooks and Nathan Lane: What's not to like? We got high on making each other laugh and the energy just flowed out."

The film version starts production early in 2005 and Broderick's romantic interest will be Nicole Kidman, who is currently starring opposite him in The Stepford Wives. He recently finished Marie And Bruce with Julianne Moore.

"I don't know how all this happened," he chuckles. "I guess the Lord decided this should be the year when I'd be opposite a lot of strong ladies. I'll take it. It's been a thrill."

Broderick's attitude is quite different from the mindset of the men in The Stepford Wives, who all feel so threatened by their overachiever wives that they conspire to turn them into subservient robots.

"Look what happens when you put together a bunch of nerdy white guys with money," he begins. "One minute they're smoking cigars and playing poker, then all of a sudden they're treating women like mindless playthings. That's what I find really frightening.

"But, unfortunately, it's how people deal with everything they don't understand. If it's not what they're familiar and comfortable with, then it has to be wrong somehow. First, it's all houses should be the same, then it's all women should be blonde and the next thing you know, it's no Jews allowed.

"I don't want to make it sound like this picture is too deep; after all, it is a comedy. Still, you do get the feeling that Stepford is a little fascist community. It's quite scary, actually."

Another theme of The Stepford Wives is our society's obsessive quest for perfection, a trend that bothers Broderick as well.

"Look at our TV shows. Okay, I admit it. I've seen The Swan and I find it deeply disturbing. Is there anything that people won't do to make everything the way they always dreamed it would be? Obviously not.

"But at least those people who go in for all that reconstructive surgery are only hurting themselves. In Stepford, the men set out to change their wives — the people they supposedly love — and that's really chilling. I think about my wife and there isn't a single thing I'd want to change about her."

This last fall, Broderick's mother died, casting a shadow over his otherwise charmed existence. "We were very close," he says softly. "She had an enormous influence on me when I was growing up."

He grows reflective as he thinks about how the deaths of both his father and mother affected him.

"It's very different from when you're 42 and lose a parent than when you're 20. When somebody dies at 55, it's dreadful. When they're 78, it still hurts, but at least you sensed it might be coming.

"There finally comes a point in your life," he says, "when you know things are not going to go on forever."

And at that instant, Ferris Bueller grew up.