As the son of a drive-in theater manager, actor Matthew Modine grew up watching movies. “I always enjoyed films that were about problem-solving,” he told me on "Salon Talks." “And I never wanted to play bad guys. I didn't want to be the person who was causing problems . . . I wanted to be a person who was providing a solution.” Ideologically, Modine believes that actors have a personal responsibility for impacting people’s lives. And he lives it. Citing Native American sensibility, he notes, “What we have to do all the time in our lives is think and to try to look at [the] totality of our decisions, the things that we do.”
That sensibility is at play in every role he takes. Nearly 40 years ago, he passed on the lead role of Maverick in "Top Gun," which eventually went to Tom Cruise and was the highest-grossing domestic film of that year. He found the story’s focus on “war pornography” disturbing, he said. “I didn't want to be in a movie that perpetuated this idea that 'those people are bad and we are good.' And 'We're right, you're wrong.' I just thought the whole movie was silly.” Modine's more recent roles, like Vannevar Bush (the scientist and creator of the Manhattan Project) in "Oppenheimer," can be hard to square with his stance on nuclear power. While he was honored to portray Bush for director Christopher Nolan as an important part of history, he balanced it by executive producing a documentary called “Downwind,” about the lethal effects of nuclear testing on American soil.
