Matthew Broderick is no stranger to NYC’s glitz and glamour — but even he’s had some scary run-ins with muggers in the Big Apple.
The “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” star, 61, revealed he was “mugged often” during his childhood in New York, and each time chalked it up to being “a young guy.”
“I got mugged often! I’ve been mugged all through the Village, Times Square, Upper West Side,” he said on Tuesday’s episode of the iHeartPodcast Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi. “I never had any money! And people constantly wanted [to mug me].”
“I’m talking like 12 [years old] — that’s when it happened a lot,” said the actor, who grew up on Washington Square North.
“It was mostly other boys just being bullies and getting lunch money or something like that. But sometimes it was somewhat scary.”
Recalling one incident, Broderick said he and a friend were skateboarding in Central Park and a “massive gang came flying out” before robbing them.
“I got whacked in the head with some sort of stick! It was not a joke. Thank God, we all survived it,” he added.
Broderick said that the other times he was mugged were different, as thugs threatened to “put his head through the glass” if he refused to hand his belongings over.
“You get on the subway and somebody will sit next to you and put their arm around you rather aggressively and say, ‘What’s in your pocket?’ What’s your name?’ — just be like asking you a lot of questions,” he shared.
“[You’re] just waiting, praying for the train to come out of the tunnel on the platform.”
And even though he told his parents about the mugging “once or twice,” there wasn’t much they could do about it.
“Back then, they weren’t as watchful as we are to our kids [nowadays],” he said, adding, “They were kinda like, ‘Go to a park and come in time for dinner.’ And that was it.”
Broderick has been married to “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker since 1997.
The pair share three children together: son James Wilkie, 20, and 13-year-old twin daughters Marion and Tabitha.