Matt Tucker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Matt Tucker (right) onstage in Inspecting Carol |
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| Born: | October 5, 1976 Dundee, Scotland, UK |
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| Occupation: | actor |
| Website: | Matt Tucker.com |
Matthew Berton Castillo Tucker (b. October 5, 1976) is an American filmmaker, primarily an actor and screenwriter, as well as a director and producer. He is co-founder of the production company Playhouse Films and is credited as a producer on the upcoming movie The 1 Second Film (2007).
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Tucker was born in Dundee, Scotland to Michael Tucker, a petty officer in the US Navy at the time who was born in Leavenworth, Washington and grew up in nearby Wenatchee; and Catherine Castillo who was born in Long Beach, California and raised in the Los Angeles area. He has one brother, Marcus, born in Montrose, Scotland in April 1978.
The family moved back to the United States in 1979 when Michael briefly separated from the Navy and settled in Wenatchee, Washington. By 1980, Tucker's father had re-signed with the Navy and the family moved to Fort Meade, Maryland. It was here that Tucker started school and first began realizing a desire and a talent to perform.
While he and his childhood best friend would put on magic shows and plays with stuffed animals (charged admission was 5 cents), his first true production was in a second-grade spring presentation. He sang, danced and tumbled to "Singing In the Rain" as a brown bunny.
In 1984, the Tuckers moved from Maryland to California. Initially spending time in San Diego and Santa Monica, Tucker's father was stationed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, as a Russian language instructor. He would eventually become head of the Russian Language School. The family was housed at Fort Ord, California.
During this time, Tucker became involved in school choir, singing in a prepubescent alto range. He'd also joined the Cub Scouts and was involved in numerous skits, including a few he'd written and directed himself. But it would not be until his sixth-grade year in 1988 when he climbed onstage as an actor. The role in his first play, Genius Jr., was awarded by circumstance rather than design. A friend had asked Tucker to accompany him to the auditions for moral support. The drama teacher/director saw Tucker in the room during auditions and took note that he wasn't standing up to read for anything. She instituted a rule that no one in the room could leave without reading for a part. Tucker was cast as Walter, a shy wallflower who is coerced by others in the story to cross-dress as his "cousin" at one point during the play. His friend did not end up cast. Needless to say, the acting bug bit Tucker firmly.
[edit] Teen years
Tucker would not make it back to the stage for nearly three years. In 1988, the summer after his sixth-grade year, Tucker's parents separated and eventually divorced. Tucker's father was given new orders and stationed at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. Tucker and his brother Marcus moved with their father while their mother stayed in the Monterey area. Tucker attended Centennial Middle School in South Miami for seventh and eighth grades. The school did not have an active extra-curricular drama program. Eventually, in 1990, Tucker's father retired from active duty as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, after 21 years of service. The family packed up and moved back to Wenatchee, Washington.
The family would stay in Wenatchee for a year, Tucker's freshman year of high school. He would find his way back to the stage in a production called Ducktails and Bobbysox, a '50s musical in the Grease vein. Though Tucker didn't care much for the isolated environment of the town, he was settling in to complete his high school career. Not finding work in the area, Tucker's father packed them up and moved them back to Florida.
Tucker, never a fan of Florida, tried to make the best of the situation. Now attending Homestead Senior High School, where he initially would have gone had they stayed in Florida, he found himself removed from all of the friends he'd had in middle school. Once again, the school didn't offer an extra-curricular drama program. Instead, Tucker found creative expression in the Homestead High Bronco Marching Band, a renowned program in the state.
Completing his sophomore year, Tucker, who'd always excelled in math in school though he rather despised the subject, elected to go to summer school to complete a year-long Algebra II Honors math program in six weeks. After summer school was finished and a week of gruelling marching band practice in the Florida sun, Tucker looked forward to a week of vacation before starting his junior year of high school. It was not to be as Monday, August 24, 1992 rolled around.
Hurricane Andrew slammed into the South Florida coast in the early hours of the 24th, the eye of the storm passing directly over Homestead. The Tuckers had decided to stay in their house and wait out the storm rather than evacuate, a decision Tucker says he would not make again if the situation ever presented itself. His most vivid memory - other than a horrendous buzzsaw sound of the wind ripping through the roof - was standing at a thin wooden door of one of the bedrooms with his father, holding the door closed for two-and-a-half hours straight, a vein attempt at holding the storm out.
Displaced for weeks, shuttling back and forth between an evacuation "refugee" outpost in Orlando and Homestead, the Tuckers finally moved back to Washington state. This time they settled in Bremerton, Washington, a port town west across Puget Sound from Seattle that at the time had been labelled "America's Most Liveable City". Tucker has claimed Bremerton as his hometown, having lived there continuously since 1992, longer than any other place in his life. He lived briefly in neighboring Port Orchard for six months in 2001 and a one month stint in Los Angeles in 2002 before returning to the area.
Tucker graduated from Bremerton High School in 1994. He was briefly enrolled at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, with the intent of majoring in Speech Communications and going to the School of Law. A clerical error and misplacement of his federal financial aid forms resulted in a significantly diminished financial aid award, preventing him from attending the school. He spent two years at Olympic College studying under the Video and Theater Arts program. He left that school in 1996 without a degree.
[edit] Recent life
It was during his time at Bremerton High School that Tucker got back into theater in a big way. This carried over into his time spent in college and eventually into roles in local community theater. In 2003, he expanded his acting base to roles in Seattle. In 2006, he took on a role in Tacoma.
Tucker is currently single and resides in Bremerton, Washington.
[edit] Career
Tucker has performed as a stage actor throughout the metropolitan Puget Sound, Washington (Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton) area since 1994. His variety of roles includes Brother Asher in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; the young lover Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream; the title role of Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie; the aging hippie Larry Vauxhall and subsequent play-within-a-play's Scrooge in Inspecting Carol; poker buddy Speed in The Odd Couple; the cynical Serge in Art; and the procreation-impared Nick in the musical Baby. His most recent stage role was as an exaggerated version of himself in multiple roles in a production of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete History of America (abridged) at the Tacoma Little Theater in January 2006. His favorite stage roles have been as Serge in Art and the three-character supporting roles of Tom, Phyllis and Leslie in A.R. Gurney's Sylvia.
His film and television work includes voicework for animation projects and an appearance in the 100th episode of American television series Frasier, which was filmed on location in Seattle.
Tucker is an evolving screenwriter who dabbles in various genres. He has written two unproduced feature-length screenplays: Raining in Baltimore, the story of unrequited love between two actors at a small community college when their lives and ambitions pull them in opposite directions; and Green Lantern, a live-action feature film adaptation of the DC Comics superhero which was looked at and rejected by Warner Bros. in 2004.
He has also written a number of unproduced short film scripts, including Tech Support, a 15 minute comedic snapshot of life at a computer store; and The Groomsmen, a short treatice on a group of men who form a business as professional groomsmen. His single produced work to date is the one hour short dramedy The Apartment (1998), Playhouse Films' first production.
In 1995, Tucker and his best friend and partner J.R. Bachand created Playhouse Studios, the banner under which they were going to create and film their projects. The name was taken from a nickname given their house by college theater colleagues. Their first project was to be a film called Just Friends, the story of a group of five friends whose other friend - their glue - leaves town, leaving them to wonder just how strong their bonds are with one another. The screenplay never really jelled but Tucker and Bachand liked the relationship between two of the guys that formed the bulk of the first act. This was eventually rewritten as the short The Apartment (1998). They eventually changed the name to Playhouse Films.
Tucker is currently at work on the feature-length screenplay Hawkeye: The Fifth Partition, an adaptation of the Marvel Comics hero. He is also in pre-production on Home Game, the next production from Playhouse Films which is anticipated to debut on the festival circuit in 2007.
[edit] Personal life
Tucker has admitted a weakness for women. He has been involved in a number of casual relationships and three serious relationships since he graduated from high school. He was briefly engaged to be married in 2001.
He is uncle to three nieces and one nephew. He is also godfather to Bachand's two children, a girl and a boy.
[edit] Trivia
- Though he was born "Matthew", he prefers the name "Matt". Matthew is "too formal and reminds me of being in trouble with my parents or teachers."
- The name on his birth certificate is "Matthew Berton Tucker". He added the name "Castillo" after he graduated from high school as an homage to his mother.
- Briefly toyed around with calling himself Embee Tucker, using the phonetic spelling of his first two initials as a stage name.
- His name, "Matthew" is Hebrew for "Gift of God". One of the city motto's for his birthplace of Dundee, Scotland is Dei Donum, Latin for "Gift of God".
- His middle name Berton is for his grandfather on his father's side. Though his grandfather was born Burton Glenn Tucker, he went by the name Bert throughout his life. Tucker's parents adopted the spelling.
- He was one of three to give graduation speeches at his high school graduation in 1994. He entitled his speech "Smells Like Teen Spirit", a reference to the band Nirvana. Kurt Cobain had committed suicide in April of 1994, during spring break of Tucker's senior year.
- He was the mascot for Bremerton High School - the Knight - his senior year.
- Though the connection is tentative at best, his family shares the same coat of arms (family crest) as Preston Tucker, the automobile maker famous for taking on the so-called "Big Three" auto makers in the late 1940s.
- He is of half-Mexican decent (on his mother's side) and half-"Euro-Mutt" (on his father's side), a combination of European heritages, mainly German, Dutch, Scottish and English.
- Worked onstage with Katrina Baxter Hodiak, daughter of famed actors John Hodiak and Anne Baxter, both as fellow actors in the play Inspecting Carol and as actor to her direction in the play Sylvia.
- His favorite movies are Say Anything..., Grease, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moonstruck, All the President's Men, the original Star Wars trilogy,
- His favorite bands/musicians are Counting Crows, Ben Folds (Ben Folds Five), Jim Croce, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Glen Phillips, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Bread
- He submitted his script for Green Lantern in an unconventional way. He found the names of seven of the top executives at Warner Bros., including Alan Horn, as well as Paul Levitz, President of DC Comics, and mailed them each a copy of the script.
- Once ranked in the top 3 percent of all students nationwide of the class of 1994 in math, following Hurricane Andrew, he found it hard to complete even basic Algebra equations and problems. It has gotten better over the years, but to this day, this is strangely one of the areas the trauma of the storm affected.
