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Born
December 31, 1947 · Glendale, California, USA

Birth name
Timothy Lewis Matthieson

Spouses
Megan Murphy Matheson(June 29, 1985 – 2012) (divorced, 3 children)

Jennifer Leak(September 28, 1968 – January 1971) (divorced)

QUOTES:

[on starting out in his career as a child actor] Kurt [Kurt Russell] taught me a lot. Basically, Kurt left the business for about five years. He made a lot of money as a kid, then sort of went to be a baseball player. And after that he focused on skiing … bought a house in Aspen and skied … And he didn’t care about it. My point is that you have to have a real life. I also think one has to reinvent oneself as a performer every five to seven years. I look at my career, and I was a kid actor who did cartoons, then I was a Western actor as a young man, then I was a comedy actor in movies, then a TV-movie actor, then a TV director … There are different phases … But I think one has a shelf life of about five to seven years where you’re in a series, or you play a character, or you hit in a movie — and that sort of wears out its welcome after a certain point. Then you’ve got to put it on its head, reinvent it, find a new approach, otherwise you’re just stuck being that guy who did that thing back then. So I’ve always sought out new challenges. Also, I’ve tried to have a home life and a family. I raised my kids up in Santa Barbara and got away from the city of Los Angeles so that [the environment] wasn’t so crazy for them to grow up in.

Some directors just shoot characters walking around a set, and they think that’s all they have to do. That’s not it. Howard Hawks and John Ford knew where to put the camera. They knew if the camera was here or there, it tells the story better. And, early on as an actor, I remember sometimes thinking that I’d given a good performance in certain shows, but then when I finally saw my work, it wasn’t particularly dynamic. There were flat shots, the directing wasn’t very good … But when I’d work with better directors, who’d stage my scenes differently, who use stronger camera angles, and — perhaps even though I didn’t give what I thought was the best performance — the result was more dynamic and effective. And I thought, “Ah-ah! He made me a better actor by what he did as a director.” So I think my job as a director is to help the actor give his or her best performance, as well as frame it in such a way to enhance whatever they do to create a stronger impact.

[2009, on Fletch (1985)] I got to work with one of my dear friends, Michael Ritchie, who ended up being my next-door neighbor for several years. And Chevy Chase, finally. I’d known Chevy a bit, but I’d never gotten to work with him. Chevy had been a bad boy with a drug problem, and had never really realized his potential. Fletch was the first movie he sort of straightened up on. And Michael was Harvard-educated, 6’6″, a brilliant director and political thinker. He was the guy the studio thought could handle Chevy, and keep him in check. And he could. He’d shoot the movie the way he wanted it, then do one take for Chevy. When I worked with Chevy, he’d say, “Just ad lib and try to break me up. Just insult me. Anything.” When we were doing his close-up, or when my back was to the camera, I would come up with jokes or quips or anything, to get a real reaction out of him. He was smart enough to know that was gold. So it was great fun working with him and Michael, and getting to see how the two worked together. I think Fletch and Clark Griswold were Chevy’s two best roles. He’s so incredibly talented and still vastly underused. I don’t even know what he’s doing now.