Matthew Modine

Matthew Avery Modine (born March 22, 1959) is an American actor.

Modine, the youngest of seven children, was born on March 22, 1959, in Loma Linda, California, the son of Dolores (née Warner), a bookkeeper, and Mark Alexander Modine, who managed drive-in theaters.

He is the nephew of the stage actress Nola Modine Fairbanks, and the great-grandson of the prospector and pioneer Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks.

One of his other great-grandfathers was a Swedish immigrant.

Modine lived in Utah for several years, moving every year or two.

The drive-in theaters his father managed were being torn down because the land beneath them exceeded the value of the theaters.

The Modine family returned to Imperial Beach, California, where Matthew attended and graduated from Mar Vista High School in 1977.

Modine's first film role was in John Sayles' film Baby It's You (1983).

Also that year, he co-starred in the sex comedy Private School, with Phoebe Cates and Betsy Russell.

Other films include Birdy (1984), Vision Quest (1985), Married to the Mob (1988), Gross Anatomy (1989), Pacific Heights (1990), Short Cuts (1993), Cutthroat Island (1995), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Oppenheimer (2023).

His performances caught the eye of director Harold Becker, who cast him in Vision Quest (1985, filmed 1983), based on Terry Davis's novel.

The director Robert Altman propelled Modine to international stardom with his film adaptation of David Rabe's play Streamers.

Modine played Mel Gibson's brother in Mrs. Soffel and starred with Nicolas Cage in Alan Parker's Birdy; the film was awarded Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

The actor also famously turned down the role of LT Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun (played by Tom Cruise), because he felt the film's pro-military stance went against his politics.

He rose to prominence through his role as U.S. Marine Private/Sergeant J.T. "Joker" Davis in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Modine may be best known for his role as Private/Sergeant J.T. "Joker" Davis, the central character of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Subsequently, Modine played the dangerous young criminal Treat in Alan Pakula's film adaptation of Lyle Kessler's stageplay Orphans.

Modine played the goofy, earnest FBI agent Mike Downey in Jonathan Demme's screwball comedy Married to the Mob opposite Michelle Pfeiffer.

In 1990, he led the cast of Memphis Belle, a fictionalized account of the famous B-17 Flying Fortress.

On television, he portrayed Dr. Don Francis in the HBO film And the Band Played On (1993), the oversexed Sullivan Groff on Weeds (2007), Ivan Turing in Proof (2015), and Dr. Martin Brenner in Netflix's Stranger Things (2016–2022).

Modine has been nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television for his work in And the Band Played On and What the Deaf Man Heard and received a special Golden Globe for him and the rest of the ensemble in Short Cuts.

He was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special for And the Band Played On.

In 1995, he appeared opposite Geena Davis in the romantic action-adventure film Cutthroat Island.

Modine made his feature directorial debut with If... Dog... Rabbit..., which came after the success of three short films debuting at the Sundance Film Festival: When I Was a Boy (co-directed with Todd Field), Smoking written by David Sedaris, and Ecce Pirate written by Modine.

His dark comedy, I Think I Thought, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film tells the story of a Thinker (Modine) who ends up in Thinkers Anonymous.

Other short films include To Kill an American, Cowboy, and The Love Film.

In 2003, he guest-starred in The West Wing episode "The Long Goodbye".

He portrayed the character Marco, who went to high school with C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) and who helped her deal with her father's steady mental decline due to Alzheimer's disease.

Modine agreed to take the role because he is a longtime friend of Janney.

(The two appeared together in a theatrical production of the play Breaking Up directed by Stuart Ross).

That same year, he played Fritz Gerlich in the CBS miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003).

In 2004, Modine appeared in Funky Monkey as ex-football star turned spy Alec McCall, who teams up with super-chimp Clemens and his friend Michael Dean (Seth Adkins) to take down the villainous Flick (Taylor Negron).

The film was critically panned, yet has gained a cult status.

In 2005, Abel Ferrara's Mary won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

In the film, Modine portrays a director recounting the story of Mary Magdalene (Juliette Binoche).

The following year, he guest-starred in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Rage" as a serial killer of young girls.

In 2011, he completed Jesus Was a Commie, an avant-garde-dialectical conversation about the world and the prominent issues of modern society.

Modine co-directed the short film with Terence Ziegler, the editor of I Think I Thought.

Modine's short films have played internationally.