Matthew Broderick’s ’80s Co-Star Is Unrecognizable Today

An actor who first captured widespread attention in one of the 1980s’ most beloved movies looked dramatically different during a rare public appearance in Los Angeles this week.

Now 70, the veteran performer became a familiar face thanks to memorable supporting roles opposite several of the decade’s biggest names, among them Matthew Broderick, Sean Penn and Charlie Sheen.

His screen career carried into the 1990s with parts in prominent studio projects, including a Keanu Reeves-fronted action blockbuster and a Star Trek film, before he shifted more toward television later in the decade, sharing the screen with both Michael J. Fox and Charlie Sheen.

Following years of lower-profile appearances, he later enjoyed a fresh career resurgence with a standout role on an acclaimed HBO dramedy.

Off screen, the actor is married to a fellow performer who is 20 years younger than him.

Can you guess who he is?

He’s Alan Ruck of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off fame.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Ruck for comment but has not yet heard back.

Ruck was spotted running errands with one of the two children he shares with his wife, The Killing star Mireille Enos, who, at 50, is 20 years younger than him.

He was dressed casually for some shopping around town with a white T-shirt, slim gray sweatpants and matching gray Nike trainers.

Ruck was nearly unrecognizable compared to how he looked in his best-known project, the 1986 teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The film, which was written, co-produced and directed by John Hughes, starred Matthew Broderick in the title role, while Ruck played his hypochondriac best friend Cameron Frye.

The film, about Ferris and his friends’ antics on a day playing hooky, was a hit with critics and viewers alike and helped cement Ruck’s fame.

The actor, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, began acting in Chicago in the late ’70s, before he made his film debut in 1983’s Bad Boys, in which he played a friend of Sean Penn’s character. 

He worked with Brat Pack members Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe the same year in Class. 

In 1985, Ruck met Matthew Broderick when they starred in the original cast of Neil Simon’s 1985 play Biloxi Blues, and he made his Broadway debut when the show transferred from Los Angeles.

The friendship the two actors established proved to be pivotal, as it was Broderick who urged Ruck to audition for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off once he had been cast as the lead.

Ruck later told The Guardian that Hughes had originally envisioned Anthony Michael Hall in the title role, with Emilio Estevez playing the role of his friend Cameron 

Ironically, Ruck later worked with Estevez when he appeared in 1990’s Young Guns II.

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As the ’90s progressed, he continued to score supporting roles in major films, but they tended to have considerably less screen time than the parts that made his name.

Ruck played one of the passengers on a hijacked bus in 1994’s Speed, which starred Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper.

The same year, he had a small role as Capt John Harriman in Star Trek Generations, and in 1996 he played one of a group of storm trackers in Twister, starring the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

After appearing earlier in the decade in the short-lived sitcom Going Places and the sketch comedy series The Edge, Ruck increasingly took small guest roles to get by.

While speaking to The Guardian in 2021, Ruck said he had ‘attitude problems’ and struggles with alcohol that kept him from getting lucrative film roles at the time and forced him to work more in television, which didn’t have the cultural cachet that it now does.

‘I used to drink a lot. I don’t do that anymore,’ Ruck explained, adding: ‘There was always an excuse to take a drink. 

‘If things were not going well, I would have a drink. If things were going exceedingly well, I’d have many drinks,’ he recalled. ‘Then my manager at the time said, “I think you’re drinking too much.” I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, ‘There’s gotta be a reason why you’re not working, and this is the only thing I can think of.” I was so desperate at this point that I was willing to try anything, so I stopped.’

After laying off the booze, he scored a hit with a main cast role opposite Michael J. Fox on Spin City, which ran from 1996 to 2002. 

Fox led the series until 2000, when his Parkinson’s disease symptoms led him to withdraw and be replaced by Ruck’s former costar Charlie Sheen for the final two seasons.

He continued to be an in-demand actor in films and television for years to come, but a late-career triumph helped to revive his career and make him more popular than he had been in decades.

In 2018, Ruck debuted on Succession, the HBO dramedy about the billionaire Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his children who vie for control of the media empire he built.

Ruck provided much of the comic relief as the oblivious oldest child Connor Roy, a clueless libertarian who largely avoided competing with his siblings, half-brothers Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) and half-sister Siobhan (Sarah Snook), because he was occupied with grandiose visions of running for president despite having no accomplishments to his name.

The series, which concluded in 2023 after four seasons, was serenaded by critics, while Connor’s on-screen antics made Ruck a fan favorite.

In 2022 and 2024, Ruck and the rest of the main cast won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series at the Screen Actors Guild awards, and he was also nominated for supporting actor honors at the 2024 Golden Globes and Primetime Emmys.

Ruck shares two children with his wife Mireille Enos, whom he met in 2005 when they starred on Broadway together. 

They share a daughter, Vesper Vivianne, and a son, Larkin Zouey, while Ruck also has two older children from his first marriage to actress Claudia Stefany, to whom he was married from 1984 to 2005.