In 2002, he wrote and directed the film City of Ghosts, starring himself, James Caan and Gérard Depardieu.
He had a resurgence when he played Nicole Kidman's husband in To Die For (1995), as well as starring roles in Wild Things (1998) and There's Something About Mary (1998), for which he received an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. In 1989, Dillon won critical acclaim for his performance as a drug addict in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy.ĭillon continued to work in the early 1990s with roles in films like Singles (1992). In 1985, Dillon was namechecked in the lyrics of the Roger Daltrey song 'After The Fire' (written by Pete Townshend). Dillon did voiceover work in the 1987 documentary film Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. He made his Broadway debut with the play The Boys of Winter in 1985. He followed those up with The Flamingo Kid in 1984. The Outsiders and Rumble Fish had Dillon working with Francis Ford Coppola and Diane Lane. All three films were shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hinton's hometown. Hinton novels: Tex (1982), The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983).
In the early 1980s, Dillon also had prominent roles in three adaptations of S. One of his next roles was in Liar's Moon, where he played Jack Duncan, a poor Texas boy madly in love with a rich banker's daughter. The only available copies of this film are stored at UCLA, where a legal dispute makes it unavailable to the public. The films, released in March and July 1980, respectively, were box office successes and raised Dillon's profile among teenage audiences.Īnother of Dillon's early roles was in the Jean Shepherd PBS special The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters. Dillon's performance was well-received, which led to his casting in two films released the following year: the teenage sex comedy Little Darlings, in which Kristy McNichol's character loses her virginity to a boy from the camp across the lake, played by Dillon, and the more serious teen dramedy My Bodyguard, where he played a high-school bully opposite Chris Makepeace. The film received a regional, limited theatrical release in May 1979, and grossed only slightly over $200,000.
Dillon auditioned for a role and made his debut in the film. In 1978, Jane Bernstein and a friend were helping director Jonathan Kaplan cast the violent teen drama Over the Edge when they found Dillon cutting class at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont.
In 2015, he starred in the first season of the FOX television series Wayward Pines, for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. He had earlier been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for narrating Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
For Crash (2004), he won an Independent Spirit Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. (2013) and The House That Jack Built (2018). In the 2000s, he made his directing debut with City of Ghosts (2002) and went on to star in the films Factotum (2005), You, Me and Dupree (2006), Nothing but the Truth (2008), Sunlight Jr. In a 1991 article, famed movie critic Roger Ebert referred to him as the best actor within his age group, along with Sean Penn. From the late 1980s onward, Dillon achieved further success, starring in Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Singles (1992), The Saint of Fort Washington (1993), To Die For (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), In & Out (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and Wild Things (1998). Hinton book adaptations Tex (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), The Outsiders (1983) and The Flamingo Kid (1984). He has received various accolades, including an Oscar and Grammy nomination.ĭillon made his feature film debut in Over the Edge (1979) and established himself as a teen idol by starring in the films My Bodyguard (1980), Little Darlings (1980), the three S. Matthew Raymond Dillon (born February 18, 1964) is an American actor.