Matthew Modine

Actor and Environmentalist

Matthew Modine is a Plastic Oceans International Ambassador, actor, filmmaker, author, photographer, political activist and environmentalist. He’s internationally renowned and has worked with many of the film industry’s most acclaimed directors on projects including Birdy, Full Metal Jacket, Dark Knight Rises, Married to the Mob, Vision Quest, Memphis Belle, Shortcuts, Showtime’s Weeds and the Netflix global phenomenon, Stranger Things.

Matthew has performed on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, on London’s West End, in Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues directed by Robert Altman, and played Atticus Finch in a theatrical production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Hartford Stage, which became the most successful production in the theatre’s 60-year history.

Matthew has been nominated for multiple Emmys and is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup and Golden Lion for his work as an actor. He’s the author of the award winning book, Full Metal Jacket Diary. 

Matthew has worked in the environmental sector for more than three decades. He studied oceanography in San Diego and has been passionate advocate for the health and protection of the world’s oceans and sea life. Bicycling has been his primary form of transportation since moving to New York in 1980.

Most of his environmental accomplishments are based on common sense solutions. In the mid-90s, Matthew single-handedly convinced the William Morris Talent Agency to evolve away from single page script printing to double-sided, effectively cutting paper consumption in half. He shared this idea of paper reduction with other actors and agencies and double-sided scripts are now the industry standard, saving billions of sheets of paper over the years.

While working on a film in Ouerzazate, Morocco, Matthew helped to institute a plastic bottle deposit and recycling program. The effort not only cleared the desert of discarded bottles, but provided young kids that collected the bottles with pocket money (as it did for Modine when he was a boy).

Matthew is the founder of Bicycle for a Day (BFAD), which has a mission to encourage bicycling as a way toward better health and environmental sustainability. BFAD’s first event attracted some 14,000 participants.

Presently, Matthew works on his global DO-ONE Campaign, a viral video campaign which encourages and empowers individuals to “do one” thing everyday to reduce wasteful behaviors.

Matthew served on the board of NYC’s Transportation Alternatives, Madison Square Garden’s Garden of Dreams Foundation, Lustgarten  Pancreatic Cancer Foundation, Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy, Bronx NY, the Director of Humanitarian Activities for Twisted Sun, Inc. and the acting President of Hyper Chariot.

Matthew founded CardCarryingLiberal.net, a grassroots movement dedicated to human rights. In addition, Matthew is an avid supporter of The Wounded Warrior Project, Purple Heart Foundation and God’s Love We Deliver.

Learn more about Matthew at his website: http://matthewmodine.com.