By Wonderwall.com Editors
2:00pm PDT, Mar 21, 2022
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"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Those immortal words from Ferris Bueller have never rung more true… because somehow the movie's eternally boyish star, Matthew Broderick, is turning 60! Join Wonderwall.com as we celebrate the actor's big day on March 21, 2022, by looking back at his life and career in pictures.
Keep reading to take a walk down memory lane with Sarah Jessica Parker's hubby…
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Boy wonder! Matthew Broderick was born in New York City to mom Patricia, a playwright, actress and painter, and dad James, an actor and World War II veteran. His first major acting role was in a production staged by his acting school, HB Studio, starring alongside his father in the play "On Valentine's Day." Soon came an off-Broadway play and a positive New York Times review that launched Matthew (seen here in a 1983 portrait) onto the Broadway stage. "Before I knew it, I was like this guy in a hot play," he told "60 Minutes II" in 2004. "And suddenly, all these doors opened."
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Matthew Broderick was a budding theater star when he made his film debut in 1983's "Max Dugan Returns," written by Neil Simon (the playwright who ultimately would work with Matthew five times, both on stage and on screen). Jason Robards — seen here with Matthew and Marsha Mason, who played his mother — starred in the titular role as an aging con artist who learns he's terminally ill and visits his daughter and grandson.
RELATED: Eddie Murphy's life in photos
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In his first big-screen starring role, Matthew Broderick played a teenage computer hacker who accidentally accesses a U.S. military supercomputer that's programmed to simulate, predict and engage in nuclear war against the Soviet Union in the 1983 Cold War techno-thriller "WarGames." The film, which also starred Ally Sheedy (pictured) was a box office success and garnered three Oscar nods.
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On June 5, 1983, just two days after "WarGames" premiered, 21-year-old Matthew Broderick won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play in for his performance in Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs."
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Matthew Broderick played Phillipe Gaston, a thief known as "The Mouse," in the 1985 medieval fantasy "Ladyhawke." The movie — which also starred Rutger Hauer (pictured), Michelle Pfeiffer and several trained red-tailed hawks — wasn't a critical or box-office hit, but it solidified Matthew's status as an up-and-coming movie star.
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Bueller…? Bueller….? Bueller….? Matthew Broderick was the unforgettable star of the 1986 classic "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," about a Chicago teenager who plays hooky a month before his high school graduation. Also starring Alan Ruck and Mia Sara — and directed by '80s movie maestro John Hughes — the film turned the young actor into a household name. Read on to see which co-star Matthew ended up dating — and sharing a tragic, life-altering experience with…
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Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey, who played his big sister Jeanie in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," began dating during the movie's filming but kept the romance under wraps — until tragedy put them in the spotlight. On Aug. 5, 1987, while vacationing together in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Matthew was driving a rental car that crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with a vehicle driven by a local mother and daughter, ages 63 and 28, who were killed instantly. Matthew later was convicted of careless driving and fined $175. Jennifer, who suffered severe whiplash, has said that despite the release just weeks later of her smash hit "Dirty Dancing," she was tormented by survivor's guilt for many years. The couple (seen here at the Oscars on March 30, 1987, a little more than four months before the crash) broke up not too long after the devastating accident.
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Matthew Broderick played Eugene Jerome, a Jewish teen from Brooklyn who's drafted into the U.S. Army, in the 1988 film "Biloxi Blues," the second chapter in Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical "Eugene trilogy," which began with "Brighton Beach Memoirs." "I find his death much more sad than I thought I would. Even when somebody dies who's 91, it just feels like an era has passed. A huge chunk of my life was about him and his plays," Matthew wrote in a Variety tribute to the playwright after his death on Aug. 26, 2018, at age 91. "He is one of our greatest American playwrights."
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In the 1987 film "Project X," Matthew Broderick played a U.S. military airman who is paired with a graduate student, played by Helen Hunt, to care for the sign-language-proficient chimp Virgil (pictured) and other primates who are being used in a secret U.S. Air Force project. Keep reading for more about the on-set relationship that blossomed during filming — and it wasn't with the chimp!
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After starring together in "Project X," Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt — seen here at a fundraiser for then-presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in October 1988 — dated for several years.
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Matthew Broderick played Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, in the 1989 Civil War drama "Glory." The film received five Oscar nominations and won three, including best supporting actor for Denzel Washington. Matthew's surprising personal connection to the Civil War would emerge later in life and become a defining and emotional revelation for the actor. (More on that later!)
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Matthew Broderick starred with screen legend Marlon Brando in the 1990 comedy crime caper "The Freshman," playing a New York film student who becomes entangled in an illicit exotic animal business.
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He's got the look of love! Matthew Broderick was introduced to Sarah Jessica Parker in November 1991 by her big brothers Pippin and Toby, who founded a theater company where Matthew was directing a play. Several months later, he called her and "left a very charming, very self-effacing message on the machine. You know, 'Hi, it's Matthew Broderick,'" she told The New York Times in 1996. The pair (seen here at the Golden Globe Awards in January 1993) began dating shortly thereafter.
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Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker tied the knot in New York City on May 19, 1997, at a surprise wedding that their 100 guests had been led to believe was a party. The couple (seen here in July 1997, two months after their nuptials) opted for an unconventional ceremony: It was officiated by Matthew's sister Jane, a minister, and the bride wore black. "I never thought about a wedding dress. Never. Had not one daydream about it," SJP later told People. "At one point I just simply remember thinking, 'God, I really hope he asks me to marry him.' I don't know when or why. It was fairly early on."
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After appearing in crowd-pleasers like "The Cable Guy" and "Godzilla," Matthew Broderick won critical acclaim as civics teacher Jim McAllister opposite Reese Witherspoon's overachieving student Tracy Flick in the 1999 black comedy "Election."
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Matthew Broderick starred with Nathan Lane in the wildly successful 2001 Broadway production of "The Producers," in which he played Leo Bloom, an accountant who co-produces a musical that's designed to fail but turns out to be a huge hit. The show won the most Tonys Awards in history with 12 wins (Matthew was nominated for best actor in a musical but lost out to Nathan), and the actors both reprised their roles in the 2005 film adaptation.
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In August 2000, Matthew Broderick was happy to play the role of arm candy for his wife, "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker, when she wore a very Carrie Bradshaw-appropriate dress to the the Emmy Awards. She didn't take home the trophy for outstanding actress in a comedy series that night — but would go on to win the Emmy the following year and again in 2004.
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And baby makes three! Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker welcomed son James Wilkie Broderick on Oct. 28, 2002. The couple (seen here posing for a throng of photographers in New York City on Nov. 1, 2002) quickly settled in to a low-key life in lower Manhattan. "If I could revisit one moment in my life, it would be the birth of my children, definitely," SJP told The Edit magazine in 2016. "It's the greatest! There is this suspended animation around [birth]: everything goes away; the entire world is sucked up; time suspends. It's just you, and in my case my husband, and this child, and it's absolute euphoria."
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It was a busy year for Matthew Broderick! In 2004, he filmed the big-screen adaptation of "The Producers" and starred in the off-Broadway play "The Foreigner" while prepping to star in the 2005 production of "The Odd Couple" on Broadway with pal Nathan Lane. He still found time to accompany wife Sarah Jessica Parker to the Emmys in September, where he hung with her co-star Kristin Davis and got caught in the middle of an intense conversation between Charlotte and Carrie!
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Matthew Broderick and his friend and frequent co-star Nathan Lane were honored with a double star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Jan. 9, 2006. Eleven years later, Matthew was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
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Old flames reunite! Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt, who dated for several years in the late '80s after starring together in "Project X," caught up at an event in West Hollywood in January 2010.
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Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick became a family of five with the arrival of twins Marion Broderick and Tabitha Broderick on June 22, 2009. The "Sex and the City" star has been candid about her fertility struggles after having son James Wilkie in 2002. "We tried and tried and tried and tried to get pregnant," Parker told Vogue, "but it just was not to be, the conventional way. I would give birth as often as I could, if I could. I cherished all the milestones, the good and the bad."
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Tracing his roots! Matthew Broderick was featured on the NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" in March 2010. He learned that his paternal great-great-grandfather, Robert Martindale, was a Union soldier during the Civil War and a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg who had been buried in an unmarked grave in Georgia. Matthew later revealed that his participation in the ancestry research program emotionally reconnected him with the role he'd played in the Oscar-winning film "Glory" 22 years earlier.
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Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker with kids (from left) Marion Loretta Broderick, Tabitha Hodge Broderick and James Wilkie Broderick, remained in New York City, where the family frequently attends events like the Broadway premiere of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in April 2017.
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Matthew Broderick remains very close with his sister, the Reverend Janet Broderick, who officiated his wedding to SJP! The duo posed together at a reading of "Truman Capote's 'A Christmas Memory'" at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey, on Jan. 5, 2018.
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Twenty-six years after they worked together in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker teamed up again on Broadway. Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite" (seen here in a preview performance on Feb. 25, 2022) was slated to open on March 13, 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced its official opening to March 28, 2022. It's an appropriate project for the pair nearly 25 years after they tied the knot: In the show, they transform into three different married couples.
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Family date night! Matthew Broderick and James Wilkie Broderick, who is now a college freshman, stepped out with Sarah Jessica Parker for the premiere of her "Sex and the City" sequel "And Just Like That…" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on Dec. 8, 2021.
