Why Hank From Asteroid City Looks So Familiar
Wes Anderson's 11th feature film sees a bevy of big Hollywood stars come together in a fictional '50s town where they experience what can only be assumed to be an extraterrestrial encounter. The cast includes not only industry-heavy hitters Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, and Edward Norton but also Wes Anderson alumni Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, and Adrien Brody.
"We did this movie coming up, 'Asteroid City,' in Spain, and it wasn't easy work," Cranston said in an interview with Collider. "Working for Wes is not easy. It's very detailed and very specific, and so you really have to really concentrate hard. What offsets that is the congeniality and the togetherness of the experience."
In March, fans were treated with a fun trailer that puts the talents of the exceptional cast on display, and we got a peek at another actor in quick cuts during the two-minute preview. Sitting in the driver's seat of a broken-down car is a man named Hank, and the actor who plays him, Matt Dillon, is one you may have seen in many financial and critical successes in the past few decades. This is why Hank from "Asteroid City" looks so familiar.
Matt Dillon was one of the Outsiders
"Asteroid City" is not the only stacked cast that Matt Dillon has been a part of. The actor also appeared in one of the more influential movies of the 1980s, "The Outsiders," which features a handful of future stars, including Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise. Set in Oklahoma in the 1960s, the story follows a group of greasers donned in denim jackets and plain T-shirts and roaming the rough streets on which they spend their time.
Dillon appeared as Dallas "Dally" Winston, a tough and loyal member of the group who helps two of the others hide after they unintentionally find themselves in a deadly confrontation with a rival gang. After one of them dies, Dally robs a store in grief with an empty gun and uses it to threaten the police so that they will kill him, overcome with devastation at the death of his friend.
But the fame of leading the film didn't feel right to Dillon, who told Roger Ebert in 1983, "I can't understand it. Looks aren't a big thing to me. I keep reading these articles in fan magazines about me, and I don't even know who they're talking about. It's boring."
He was a devious high school guidance counselor in Wild Things
The 1980s and 1990s gave us erotic thrillers like "Body Heat," "Fatal Attraction," and "Basic Instinct." Though the nascent genre had all but died out by the turn of the century, this was not before the debut of "Wild Things," a story of sex, drugs, money, and devilish manipulation set in South Florida.
Matt Dillon appeared as Sam Lombardo, a high school guidance counselor accused of raping two female students. During the trial, it is revealed that the allegations were false, and his lawyer negotiates a settlement in which Lombardo will be paid $8.5 million for defamation. It is later revealed that Lombardo and the students had planned the entire thing from beginning to end to scam one of the supposed victim's wealthy mothers out of a fair amount of cash.
The film is full of twists and turns, but one twist originally in the script, which would have shown Lombardo getting hot and heavy with Detective Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon), didn't make the cut. Dillon told Total Film, "Man, I was relieved when they got rid of that scene. Kevin seemed pretty attached to it, though!"
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Dillon fell under Mary's spell in There's Something About Mary
No decade did the raunchy comedy the way the 1990s did, and no one did it better than the Farrelly brothers. After their smash success in "Dumb and Dumber" and later cult favorite in "Kingpin," they brought Ben Stiller to the front of the comedic line in "There's Something About Mary."
Following Ted (Stiller) as he attempts to get a second chance with the girl of his dreams, Mary (Cameron Diaz), the quest is muddied by a bunch of other men who are also smitten with the beautiful and alluring woman. Ted's adversaries include Tucker (Lee Evans), Mary's friend; Dom (Chris Elliott), Ted's best friend; and Pat Healy (Matt Dillon), a private investigator. Ted initially hires Healy to find Mary, but when he does, he tells Ted lies to make him uninterested in her. Eventually, Ted finds out and the group of men competes for her affection.
Dillon spoke about "There's Something About Mary" on the podcast "Everything Iconic with Danny Pelligrino," commenting on the familial environment the Farrelly brothers created and noting that filming the movie was a lot of fun.
He was easily despisable in Crash
Some movies find the deepest parts of who we are as a society and pull them to the surface. They open up our darkest wounds and put them on display for the whole world to see. "Crash" took that idea and created one of the most potent, visceral experiences you can have with a movie. It was yet another film with an ensemble cast that Matt Dillon participated in, this one including Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandiwe Newton, Tony Danza, Keith David, Jennifer Esposito, and Brendan Fraser.
Dillon appeared as Officer Ryan, a resentful and racist cop who is hard to watch the entire time he is on-screen. Of course, if he is hard to watch, it's because Dillon portrays him so perfectly. The actor sat down with MovieWeb to discuss what it was like to play the character and whether he had any hesitance to play someone so overtly racist. "I wanted to be very truthful with this character," Dillon said. "I wouldn't have gone into this project with any other agenda."
Matt Dillon couldn't shake Owen Wilson in You, Me and Dupree
Between "Meet the Parents," "Zoolander," "Around the World in 80 Days," and "Wedding Crashers," Owen Wilson seemed to be about as bankable in the early 2000s as any star out there. In 2006, he played the freeloading hippie Dupree, who finds himself crashing on his best friend's couch until he can find his inner "-ness," in "You, Me and Dupree," a summer comedy that also features Michael Douglas and Kate Hudson.
Matt Dillon played Carl, Dupree's put-together best friend, whose marriage to Molly (Hudson) is immediately tested when Dupree lands in their lap after the honeymoon. Carl and Molly eventually come together and find their way, but only after Dupree pushes them to the brink of catastrophe, with a tiny little house fire thrown in for good measure.
"Well, they say good neighbors make good fences," Dillon told MovieWeb about the situation. "This is clearly not something Dupree lives by; he has real boundary problems, so that is maybe the worst aspect of Dupree, worse than the fact that he burns down his living room, his sofa, and that he runs around naked. It's more in a way of how he puts Carl in the dog house; that is sort of unforgivable in a friend to get your friend in trouble with his girlfriend – that's really trouble – or his wife, in this case."
He was a lost Secret Service agent in Wayward Pines
For a long time, it seemed like you couldn't get a TV series picked up unless there was a supernatural angle to it. Fantasy-science fiction was all the rage, and fans were given a multitude of shows to feast on throughout the 2010s, including "Game of Thrones," "Supernatural," "Teen Wolf," and others. One that flew under the radar was Fox's "Wayward Pines," which follows Secret Service agent Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon), who wakes up from a car accident in a town that he cannot escape from, with the agents he was sent to find either dead or settled into life there.
"There are certain questions that my character wasn't asking. He's an investigator. He's a law enforcement person, and these outrageous things are being presented to him. So, what I did was start asking questions as the character would ask questions, and giving voice to those questions helps you," the actor told Collider about his approach. "They were questions he would ask, and good things came as a result of it. As we went forward, I would ask about things he should want to know, and it brought things up and forced the other characters to answer questions."