1997

Matthew Broderick's Day Off

An Interview with Matthew Broderick

By Chris Haines, Tony Awards Online

You've been acting since you were an adolescent. Did you always want to be an actor?
My father was an actor who mainly worked as a stage actor. I grew up travelling around to regional theatres, since that's where he predominately worked. We'd take our summer vacations wherever he worked--in Stockbridge or Maryland, places like that. I grew up liking backstage and watching plays. I didn't know that I wanted to be an actor until much later, in high school. I don't know if I wanted to admit it at the time, but I always wanted to be in the theatre.

Did you ever have any roles in your father's shows like walk-on parts?
When I was about seven, my father called my sister and I offering us a chance to be in a play that Frank Langella was directing. Once I had a chance to do it, I didn't want it at all. I think I started crying right on the phone. I was horrified. My sister took the part. I just couldn't handle it. Maybe I wanted it very badly, so it was scary.

I also learned to read very late, so I think I was afraid that I would be holding a script and read it wrong or make a fool of myself.

Meanwhile, I was in grammar school and I was in all the plays and loved it, plays that we would make up were based in ancient Egypt or places like that. When it came time for me to chose a high school, I chose Walden because it had a good theatre. I enjoyed sports, but after a leg injury I had to take a break, so I auditioned for A Midsummer's Night Dream. It's a bit of a cliche, but as soon as I was on stage, I knew that I had found what I wanted to do.

I started auditioning for films, television, theatre, whatever. The first thing I got was Torch Song Trilogy. That's how I got started in theatre.

How do you develop a character for the stage? Have you devised your own approach?
I learned a lot from my father, who used to come and watch me and talk about the character and the role. And my mom, who was very smart about the structure--what the role was doing in the story. My father grew up doing all kinds of roles. I remember him saying when I was playing a cop, "What kind of movies does this guy like? How does he move?" Basically, I read the script a lot.

Often the best work comes when I'm not thinking about the role and I'll see someone walk by who makes me connect with the character I'm working on.

The only acting school type of thing I use is called an "As if." You say "I'm carrying this bag of potato chips as if it were a pellet of nuclear material that I have to get to Washington." You can use that technique endlessly.

You've worked with some of the top playwrights in America, including Neil Simon and Horton Foote. Would you say that one writes characters who are easier to inhabit than the others?
I've done five of Horton Foote's plays. "Easy" isn't the right word for his characters, but they're very fulfilling. These characters are mysterious because they talk about other people who aren't on stage. Watching these plays, you can think that nothing is happening, but actually a lot is happening.

You recently did Foote's Death of Papa down south. Is it coming to New York?
I hope so. There was something in the Post about it, but I don't think that was true. I just did a run of it in North Carolina with Ellen Burstyn.

How did it feel being on the other side of the camera directing Infinity, your first feature film?
It was a lot of work. It was great in retrospect but at the time it was very hard. We didn't have enough money to do what we were doing. In fact, a whole week of shooting wasn't finished when we stopped shooting. We had to come back and shoot it later.

Did you emulate any of the directors who you'd worked with as an actor?
I thought about everybody I'd worked with who I liked. I called Mike Nichols all the time. And Jonathan Kaplan, who directed Project X. He was helpful because he originally got started in B movies and knew how to cheat to get a scene. When you need to hire people, Mike Nichols tends to say, "Why don't you get the guy who shot The English Patient?" I needed someone a little more down to earth.

Your mother was the screenwriter for this picture. How was it working with a family member?
She worked incredibly hard. But with family it's hard to keep it about the movie and getting the story right, not "why won't you ever write the way I tell you to?"

Any plans to return to Broadway?
Not right now. I very much want to. I'm sure I will. I'd love to do another musical.

You won your first Tony for Brighton Beach Memoirs when you were very young. How did that feel?
It was thrilling. I was 21. It had been quite a year. I had just starred in two movies--War Games and Max Duggan Returns. And my father had just died. Everybody told me "You're going to win." You never know, but I kind of felt that I was going to win. Vivian Matalon, who had won the Tony a year or two before, helped me with my speech. He said, "It's like the date of your execution coming up. The last few weeks feel like you're going to the electric chair." And it's true. You'd think that you'd be excited or happy, but it really felt like I was going to my death. But once it's over and you have it, it's really nice. It's also extremely nice to see your name in the nominations. I didn't get excited about it until afterwards, when I was in an elevator and I thought, "Wow, I won the Tony!"

You had a delayed reaction?
Definitely. The second time I was more worried about not getting nominated because I wanted the show (How to Succeed in Business...) to do good business. To win for a musical was a particular delight, and because Robert Morse had won it for the same role. That was nice.

I have to say that I didn't like the thirty-second limit they set for speeches. The whole fun of it is that some people are prepared and some are truly flustered. It has to be live.

The Awards will be different this year now that PBS is airing the first hour and CBS is airing the second and third. This means that people watching on television will get to see the entire show.
I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for talking to us, Matthew. See you at the Tony Awards.