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WHETHER
onstage or on the screen, Matthew Broderick is the guy
you root for. It isn’t show-business law but it’s
understood. Even by Broderick. “I don’t know how to say
this without sounding like a lunatic, but I usually am
likable to audiences,” he explains. “I play parts that
are likable. Whether I do that well or not, I’m not
saying. I don’t play people who people don’t like very
often.” Broderick made an exception for old pal Helen
Hunt in her directorial debut Then She
Found
Me. He plays
mealy-mouthed husband Ben, who leaves Hunt’s April but
really can’t make it permanent. April then has to sort
out more issues: her adoptive mom’s death, a closing
fertility window, a potential boyfriend (Colin Firth)
and the emergence of her birth mother (Bette Midler).
Broderick dispatched his part in five days. He savored
the breezier task of a supporting role, knowing full
well that his character could repel the sympathy of
ticket buyers. Ben’s no villain, just a nebbish who
doesn’t know what he wants.
“It’s
sort of relaxing not to be so liked,” Broderick says.
Broderick, a boyish 46, has trafficked in audience
goodwill since he was a young star in films such as
WarGames and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He
married an actress, Sarah Jessica Parker, whose stock in
trade is also likability.
BRODERICK with wife Sarah
Jessica Parker. They live a relatively low-key life for
celebrities.
If there
is a camera, he will make friends with it. If there is a
packed Broadway house, he will charm it. Seducing? Not
so much. Many of his characters are urban everymen, just
smart enough and cute enough.
Broderick received a mass dose of love nearly every
night as naďve accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers.
When he returned to the stage, again teaming with
Producers costar and close friend
Nathan Lane
in The Odd Couple, his passion dimmed like house
lights after intermission.
“By the
end of that,” he says, “I was like, ‘I’m sick of plays.’
I was never like that before, and I really wanna do
movies. I guess I was more open to taking these jobs.
Suddenly, it was four movies in a row.”
One of
them, the interracial romance Wonderful World,
provides evidence of the real nice guy in Broderick. In
1992 he headlined a wacky caper comedy called Out on
a Limb, written by his friend, Josh Goldin, and
Goldin’s brother, Daniel. It bombed.
“But
disaster that that was, we stayed friends ever since,”
Broderick says.
When
Josh Goldin finally got a chance to direct one of his
own screenplays 16 years later, Broderick didn’t
hesitate to sign up for the lead.
“I never
blamed him,” the actor says. “I love him. He’s
hilarious. A lot of movies don’t work out for a million
reasons.”
A
refreshed Broderick now says he’s on the lookout again
for theater possibilities but won’t rule out movies.
Heck,
even his hair is likable. What looks like trendy blond
highlights during this interview at a Park Avenue hotel
are really just graceful strands of gray, he confesses.
He appears to be carrying a few extra pounds, too, but
there’s no Iron Man or Hulk on his calendar.
The
promotional duties for his new film, a $3-million indie
that Hunt (who appeared opposite Broderick in 1987’s
Project X) fought to make for years, are minuscule
compared to the media blitz organized for his wife and
the upcoming Sex and the City movie. Broderick
and Parker, who have a five-year-old son, James Wilkie,
(named for Broderick’s late actor father), says they try
to avoid doing jobs simultaneously outside of New York.
He says neither is overworked. The family still has time
for getaways to his boyhood summer home in County
Donegal, Ireland.
“Where
we live is simple and there’s very little to do,” he
says. “That’s part of what’s nice about it. Our son for
some reason loves it. It’s a teeny little farm house.
And you can leave your door open and he can also wander
out and nothing happens....It’s a real little
community.”
While he
and Parker live a relatively low-key life for
celebrities, the Godzilla and Inspector Gadget
star cops to a few indulgences.
“I love
fancy hotels and stuff when I travel,” he says. “I will
rent a nice car when I don’t need to. I have a very
fancy bicycle. I spend a lot on restaurants. I have some
bone in my body that doesn’t let me go too crazy. I’m
not a prizefighter from the ’30s, you know. I never got
the 10 suits and the Rolls-Royce and all that stuff.”
Part of
his restraint comes from the wavering illusion of job
security. “I’m always worried about my career,” he says.
“There’s always something that you’re not getting.”
Broderick has parlayed his mensch mien into voice-over
work on big-budget animation. Bee Movie made more
money that any movie he has ever been associated with,
and he recently finished the lead in a Christmas 2008
animated mouse adventure from Universal, The Tale of
Despereaux.
“It’s
not like I pursue it,” says Broderick, who voiced Simba
in 1994’s The Lion King. “It’s something that
came. It’s a nice little bonus. It’s very low-effort. I
just go to midtown and go into a little room with a
microphone and do it for four hours.”
In case
you’re wondering, you’ll be pulling for his rodent hero,
too. |
