Matthew Modine

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Date of Birth : Mar 22nd 1959

American actor, perhaps most famous for playing Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket and high school wrestler Louden Swain in Vision Quest. His first film role was in John Sayles’ Baby It’s You. His performance caught the eye of director Harold Becker, who cast him in Vision Quest (Crazy for You) based on the novel by Terry Davis. The director Robert Altman propelled Modine to international stardom with his film adaptation of David Rabe’s play Streamers. Modine and his fellow castmates won an unprecedented Best Actor prize from the Venice Film Festival for this tragic story of young American soldiers about to be shipped to Vietnam. Modine played Mel Gibson’s brother in Mrs. Soffel and starred with Nicolas Cage in Alan Parker’s Birdy. The film was awarded a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Modine might be best known for his role as “Private Joker,” the main character of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 war movie Full Metal Jacket. Afterwards, he played the dangerous young criminal, Treat, in Alan Pakula’s film version of the hugely successful play Orphans by writer Lyle Kessler; and the goofy, earnest FBI agent Mike Downey in Jonathan Demme’s screwball comedy Married to the Mob opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. Modine was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performances in And the Band Played On and What the Deaf Man Heard.

In 1995, he worked opposite Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island. He made his feature directorial debut with If… Dog… Rabbit. This came after the success of three short films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival: When I was a Boy (co-directed with Todd Field) Smoking written by David Sedaris, and Ecce Pirate.