Matthew Broderick on Ferris Bueller

AVC: Ferris Bueller is considered to be your signature role, but you’ve very rarely played characters since who are as self-assured and confident. Why do you think that is? Why was that role such a success and such an anomaly at the same time?

MB: I don’t know. At the time, smartly or stupidly, I wanted to make sure that I could do other things, because [Ferris Bueller] was so successful that it worried me. I’m half-Jewish, you know, so I tend to do a lot of worrying. [Laughs.] I thought I was never going to be able to do anything else, and that something bad would happen. So I figured, “I’ve got to do something different,” and I deliberately avoided those kinds of roles for a while. But then I seemed to get into a period of characters that were more wishy-washy, or schlubby. And on a certain level, I never understood it, because it seemed to me I did pretty well as a wisecracker. The Neil Simon parts were like that, too—a person who always had the right answer to everything, which is more like Ferris Bueller. I don’t know why that was such an anomaly, because I thought I was pretty comfortable in that role.

[Via the AC Club]