From storming the West End with his wife Sarah Jessica Parker, to playing the architect of the US opioids crisis in dark new Netflix drama Painkiller – the star is taking a bold new direction
Matthew Broderick’s last screen performance for the foreseeable future takes place over Zoom from his house in the Hamptons for an audience comprised of a Netflix assistant and me. It’s the day before the Screen Actors Guild goes on strike, shuttering TV shows, feature films, press junkets, the lot. Broderick can’t imagine how this particular drama plays out. He gestures at the clock on the wall and the door to the garden. He says, “Here we are. This scene could be it.”
He’s had a good innings, 61-year-old Broderick, and appears to be ageing at a slower rate than the rest of us. He was already in his mid-20s when he played the truant hero of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, riding his luck in 1980s Chicago. Since then his fanbase has grown old while he’s stayed much the same: fresh-faced and boyish, slightly rounded at the edges. “I always wanted to have a long career,” he says. “And it’s been 40 years, so I guess I must have done something right.”
