Hollywood and Broadway actor Matthew Broderick says he owes his career to playwright Neil Simon.
Broderick in 1983 made both his Broadway debut in Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and his movie debut in Simon’s “Max Dugan Returns.”
He also starred with Nathan Lane in a revival of Simon’s classic comedy, “The Odd Couple,” that was one of the biggest hits of the 2005-2006 Broadway season.
Broderick says that with Simon’s death on Sunday, the theater lost “a brilliantly funny, unthinkably wonderful writer.” Broderick says he feels like he has “lost a mentor, a father figure, a deep influence in my life and work.”
Broderick says it was his “great good fortune” that both his first film and Broadway play were among Simon’s trove of work. Broderick says: “I owe him a career.”