Matthew Broderick - Interviews: 2006

Matthew Broderick: From Here To Infinity

January 1, 2006 Issue

Celebrated Weekend

Magical Mystery Tour

By Mark Seal, American Way

What does The Producers’ Matthew Broderick need to produce a perfect getaway among the rolling green hills of Ireland? A few chip shops, a cozy cottage, and (curiously) the smell of burning peat.

Matthew Broderick is going to take you on an adventure, one that he’s been taking for most of his life. It’s a journey to a magical place four hours outside of Dublin, Ireland, a seaside town called Killybegs that his parents discovered and passed on to him when Broderick, a native New Yorker, was 10 years old. Making his stage debut at age 17 opposite his father, Broderick went on to become a sensation on Broadway, winning two Tony awards. He became a superstar in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and, as an adult, he’s starred in scores of films, including Glory, Biloxi Blues, and Election. He’s broken all records on Broadway as Leo Bloom, the mousy accountant suckered by Nathan Lane’s bottom-feeder producer in The Producers, and is now starring opposite Lane onstage in The Odd Couple.

Broderick reprises his role in the movie version of The Producers, along with Lane and Uma Thurman. But this summer, he’ll be flying into Dublin with his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, and their three-year-old son, James, following the route that his parents took so many years ago. They’ll disappear into the world his folks fell in love with in the middle of nowhere, where they bought a second home and where Broderick and his family now have a home, too.

This is the same adventure on which he’s about to take you. You’ll fall asleep, if you’re lucky, for the four-hour drive from Dublin to Killybegs, which Broderick admits “people may have never heard of.” When you awaken, he promises, “your eyes pop out of your head,” and this is what you will discover.

Okay, start at the beginning.

My father has Irish heritage. My mom took a trip to Ireland — a very short trip — and when she saw Ireland, she was like, “I’ve got to take my husband here because he will be amazed to see all his relatives.” They went back a little while later and drove all around Ireland. They stopped on part of a road that they thought was beautiful, near a beach, and there was a little bed-and-breakfast in this little village, Killybegs. They ended up renting a house and getting us children over there. They got to know the woman — whom I know to this day — who owned that house. They stayed with her, and she sort of found the house for them to rent, and they ended up buying one. So they really just happened upon it. We’d spend the summer there. After renting for a year or two, my parents bought a little bungalow right on the ocean and I started going there from the time I was about 10 years old. I’ve been there pretty much every summer and many Christmases. Now I have a little house right next to my parents’ house.

Can you still stay in the bed-and-breakfast your parents found?

The woman, Maggie O’Donnell, is still there, but she does not do that anymore. She rents out the little cottage next to her house. The whole family used to live in a cottage that is next door, and it is perfectly preserved. The only way you can find her is to drive from Killybegs toward a town called Kilcar and stay on the coast road. About two miles before you get to Kilcar, I think you would just have to ask somebody, “Where is Maggie O’Donnell’s house?” They don’t even have numbers on the houses. It’s a gray, two-story building, and next to it is a cottage. They rent out that cottage.

What’s there to do in that little town?

Nothing! I mean, there’s fishing. There are some nice rocks right below the house where you can fish for mackerel and flat fish called plaice, which is kind of like a flounder. The people fish in streams around there, too, but I don’t. There is a lot of fishing. There is beautiful, beautiful hiking. It’s so green because of the rain. The downside is you could spend a month there and barely get out because it just rains. It’s incredibly lush, and there are not many trees, just rolling green hills with massive cliffs that go straight into the ocean. It’s very dramatic. The main attraction to me is, honestly, the people, the farmers who have been there forever and ever. These families I have known my whole life are so interesting. They farm sheep, mostly.

Where can you stay if you don’t have a home there?

Millions of little bed-and-breakfasts, just people’s homes you can stay in. There are also fancy hotels nearby. One is called Harvey’s Point, which is really beautiful. That is a great place to stay and a great place to eat. Then there is a hotel in St. John’s Point called Castle Murray. That’s a lovely spot.

What were your impressions of Killybegs as a kid?

I just remember how green it was, just the amount of rolling, bright green hills that you see. It’s just stunning. Of course, my first memory was the peat in the fireplaces, the smell of burning peat everywhere, which I loved. I loved that we had this big stove and that I got to help load it with peat. It smells really good. I don’t know how to describe it. It smells like peat. There is a whiskey called Lagavulin Whiskey that everyone says is very peaty. If you want to know what peat smells like, you have to have a little drink of that and maybe you will know.

Speaking of drinking, where would you go have a pint or a shot?

You can have great Guinness and whiskey. At Christmastime, everyone has a bottle at their house, basically, and you can do little shots of whiskey. In Kilcar, there are all these really wonderful pubs. If you just look in the local paper, you can [find out where to] hear whatever kind of music you want. I’m not a huge bar person, but there is a pub called John Joe’s in Kilcar where I would go to hear music. It’s just a pretty simple pub, and then in the back is a big room with chairs and then just wonderful local musicians that change every night. I always like to hear traditional Irish music. There were these young girls called the Wee Band. They were just these beautiful young Irish girl singers. They had the prettiest voices. There is also a pub called the Piper’s Rest, which is a really old village house with a nice fireplace and very comfortable seats and a beautiful old bar with extremely nice bartenders. When you go into a pub there, it’s like you are going into somebody’s home, in a way. Very friendly.

What kind of food do they have in the pubs?

When they have food, it is very simple but usually very good. Some of them have good fish, sometimes salmon or stews, often Irish stew. It depends on the size of the pub. Often, people sort of stagger out of the bar and over to the chip shop — which is across the street — where they have fish-and-chips and burgers. I like all of them. There’s a nice chip shop in the middle of Kilcar. In Killybegs, there’s one called Melly’s Café. Dunkineely, which is just an old-fashioned little one-road town, has a really good chips place. It probably has a name, but I don’t remember it. But there is only one of them.

Tell us about the places you love the most.

Glencolumbkille is a really, really beautiful town, much bigger and probably more tourist-friendly. It has kind of a folk museum in it. It has beautiful beaches. There is one called the Silver Strand. You have to walk down a million steps carved into the side of the hill. When you get down there, there’s an enormous horseshoe-shaped beach that is really, really beautiful. It’s very simple. There’s no beach club or anything like that. It’s just very natural, an Atlantic beach with perfectly white sand and lots and lots of it. It is so beautiful because there is a cliff right behind you.

Then you get back in your car and keep driving?

Yes. Another very nice town to drive to and look at and that is very pretty is called Ardara. It has another really spectacular beach, called Maghery Beach. I’ve never seen anything in the world that looks remotely like it. It’s like being in the middle of the Sahara. There’s so much sand you have to walk for about a mile just to get from the end of the grass to the water. There are caves on the edge of the shore that, if the tide is out, you can go into. They are really, really beautiful. Basically, it’s not a big activity place. It’s a place that, if you like it, what you like about it is that you can kind of read a book for three hours if you feel like it, or you can take a two-hour hike. You can go to the market and then try to figure out how to cook something that you haven’t tried before. It’s that kind of lifestyle.

What are the market and shops there like?

They are nice, but it’s not France. You can’t go get a wonderful baguette and a homemade garlic salami, for example. But you’ll find the food in this area of Ireland is simple. In Dublin, I think you can eat absolutely spectacular food. There’s a nice shop in Donegal Town called Magee Clothing. It’s a department store, which has old tweed, which is great. Studio Donegal is a really great store for wool, knitted stuff, and tweed. You can get absolutely beautiful jackets, sweaters, blankets, socks — all handmade and really, really beautiful colors. The stuff sells in fancy stores in New York, like Paul Stuart. But it comes from this tiny little factory in the town of Kilcar called Studio Donegal. That’s an absolutely wonderful little shop. I would recommend it.

How did you first tell your wife about this little place in the wilds of Ireland?

I think I had a picture and said, “My family has a house there. We should go there sometime.” She was curious. I took her there when my mom was alive, and we all stayed at my mom’s house. Luckily for me, Sarah just immediately took to Ireland. I basically just took her to those places I told you about. I think the first time we went there, we weren’t married yet.

So, the first time you took Sarah there, you flew into Dublin from New York, right? Then what did you do?

Then we had this four-hour trip. We would rent a car, but now I own a car there. You can rent a car and just drive up the coast from Dublin — well, you kind of cross the country. Or, what I usually do is hire a local driver from the town where we go, and he comes and picks us up. I don’t know the name of the highway. You follow signs to Donegal, basically. You can’t miss it. You arrive there pretty exhausted, usually, because you’ve left at night and now the sun is coming up in Ireland. The best thing I would recommend for someone going to Ireland from New York would be to at least spend a few nights in Dublin or wherever you land before venturing out.

What did Sarah think of it at first?

The first thing we did was have breakfast somewhere. She was crazy for the tea. They have these huge breakfasts there. They call it a fry, and it includes bacon, a fried egg — basically a basted fried egg — and usually a sausage and some baked beans. That’s a traditional Irish breakfast, which Sarah happened to love. It’s just the kind of place she likes. She loves having tea and biscuits and sitting by a fire. It’s kind of a cozy type of lifestyle. I think we had breakfast right in the Dublin airport, in this place called Bewley’s, which is a little bit of a chain. In Dublin, if you want really good old-fashioned tea and coffee and foods like that, you’ll want to go to Bewley’s. There is one in the airport and then there is one that is really pretty on Grafton Street.

Yeah. You fall asleep in the car, hopefully. Then when you get up, your eyes pop out of your head. You can’t believe how pretty it is. Sarah just really loved it; she was really thrilled. She really took to the people. Now, we have come back with our little boy, too, which has been really fun because the people there are very kid-friendly. They like having children over, and there are a lot of little children on our road. James just turned three, and he’s been there twice. He has a picture in his room of the house, which he calls the “cozy cottage.” He constantly wants to go there. Partly because when we are there, we are not working, and it’s just the whole family at home all the time. For him, that was really great. He also likes our car there. There are all these neighbors who come and play with him. There are huge fields to run around. There are sheep everywhere, and he likes to look at them. Horses walk by. It’s kind of a paradise for a little kid.

Anything wild, funny, or interesting happen to you there when you were younger?

I borrowed a cat when I was about 10 years old. We had mice in Ireland, and I borrowed a friend’s cat to put in the house a while and kill the mice, but the cat hid behind the curtain in terror basically the whole time. He never got any mice; he was useless. I took the cat to bring it back. I was carrying it up the road and this huge German shepherd ran out of a house and, seeing this cat in my arms, leaped on me and bit me on the hand. I just threw the cat into a bush. The cat did eventually get home, but I lost the cat and had a cut on my hand. But I didn’t tell anybody. I told my parents that I cut my hand on a fence. The next morning, the postman came to our house we were renting and said, “I hear Joe Bresland’s German shepherd bit you in the hand.” My parents then found out the whole story. That’s what a small town it is. You can’t hide anything.

MARK SEAL is an American Way contributing editor. His work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Playboy, and Time.