Matt Dillon

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Matt Dillon at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon (born February 18, 1964 in New Rochelle , New York ) is an American actor .

life and work

Matt Dillon grew up as the second eldest son of Irish parents with four brothers and one sister in the US state of New York. His father was a sales manager in a packaging material company, his mother a housewife. On his father's side, he is related to the American comic artist Alex Raymond ( Flash Gordon ), who was his great-uncle. Even at a young age, Matt Dillon was a busy actor in youth films, in which he played mostly rebellious young people from simple or socially difficult backgrounds. He made his film debut in 1979 in Jonathan Kaplan's teenage drama Angry Belly . The following year, he starred in Little Beasts alongside Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol as two dissimilar, rival teenagers during a summer camp. After Dillon had already played the title role in Tex based on a novel by Susan E. Hinton , Francis Ford Coppola cast him in 1983 for the film adaptation of Hinton's bestseller The Outsider in the role of Dallas Winston and alongside Mickey Rourke in the leading role Rumble Fish . All three films were shot in Tulsa , Oklahoma , Hinton's birthplace. In 1985 he starred opposite Gene Hackman in the agent thriller Target, directed by Arthur Penn . Also in 1985 he made his Broadway debut in the play The Boys of Winter .

At the end of the 1980s, Dillon switched to the independent subject with Gus Van Sant's road movie Drugstore Cowboy , which was to be followed by another collaboration with Van Sant with the media satire To Die For 1995. With his portrayal of the drug addict Bob , for which he received a lot of praise and was awarded the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor in 1990 , he made the transition from a popular young star to a serious actor. He showed another facet of his skills in 1993 in the depressingly realistic homeless drama Streets of New York ( The Saint of Fort Washington ). In it, Dillon played a young man suffering from schizophrenia who suddenly has to find his way in the world of night shelters and petty criminals and who finds a friend and protector in the Vietnam veteran Jerry , played by Danny Glover . In the same year he presented himself from a completely different perspective in the romantic comedy Mr. Wonderful by Anthony Minghella , with which he and Annabella Sciorra won over audiences and critics. Dillon also appeared in numerous ensemble films in the 1990s, working with directors such as Cameron Crowe ( Singles ), Ted Demme ( Beautiful Girls ) and Allison Anders ( Grace of my Heart ).

Matt Dillon became known to a wider audience as the private detective Pat Healy in the hit comedy Crazy About Mary in 1998 . Also in 1998 he played the adored sports teacher Sam Lombardo in the erotic thriller Wild Things , who reveals an unexpectedly dark side. Dillon himself directed an episode of the HBO series Oz - Hell Behind Bars in 1999 for the first time, and in 2002 he co-wrote the film drama City of Ghosts . In the thriller about insurance fraud set against the exotic backdrop of Cambodia , Dillon also took on the lead role. In 2005, he was convincing alongside Lili Taylor in the character study Factotum based on the novel of the same name by Charles Bukowski in the role of Henry Chinaski , a character who is based on Bukowski. For his acting performance in Paul Haggis ' episodic drama LA Crash ( Crash ) Dillon again won an Independent Spirit Award and was honored with an Oscar nomination in 2006 for Best Supporting Actor . The role of Officer Ryan also earned him nominations at the Golden Globe Awards , the British BAFTA Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards , where he and his fellow actors received the award for Best Acting Company. In September 2006 Matt Dillon was honored with the Donostia Award for his artistic work at the San Sebastián Film Festival .

In 1987 he had a guest appearance in a video clip for the Irish band The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl . In Fairytale of New York , he played a cop who puts a drunken Shane MacGowan in a sobering cell. Also in the video clip for Madonna's Bad Girl , with which he was in front of the camera in Bloodhounds of Broadway in 1989 , he can be seen in a short appearance alongside Christopher Walken in 1993 . In 2007, Dillon himself directed the music video for the single Been There All The Time by the American indie band Dinosaur Jr. In 2007 he also appeared in Julien Temple's documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten , a tribute to the Clash frontman, who died in 2002 Joe Strummer , with. In the Simpsons episode Towed! ( Midnight Towboy , 2007) he took on a guest role as the impulsive tow truck driver Louie , whom Homer clashes with .

In 2001, Dillon was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Spoken Word Album category for his interpretation of Jack Kerouac's classic On the Road . He also voiced documentaries such as Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987) and Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (2006) through the football club of the same name . The actor is also mentioned in the song After the Fire , which Pete Townshend wrote for Roger Daltrey's solo album Under A Raging Moon (1985). The line of text I saw Matt Dillon in black and white / There ain't no color in memories / He rode his brother's Harley across the TV refers to Dillon's character in Rumble Fish , whose older brother, portrayed by Mickey Rourke, is only a motorcycle type ( Motorcycle Boy ) is called.

Matt Dillon was dating actress Cameron Diaz in the late 1990s . He lives in New York. His brother Kevin Dillon is also an actor and is best known for his role in the HBO series Entourage .

Filmography

Web links

Commons : Matt Dillon  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donostia Awards 2006 with excerpts from Dillon's film career (accessed on September 22, 2010)
  2. ↑ Lyrics of After the Fire with explanation (accessed on September 22, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Dillon, Matt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dillon, Matthew Raymond (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH 18th February 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH New Rochelle , New York , United States