But Matthew Comes from God, Dammit!

Unless your own name is Matthew, you’ve probably not noticed this phenomenon. But heroes of film and TV are very rarely named Matthew or Matt. Scan through the IMDB, and you’ll find roughly 80 Matthews and 160 Matts:

A vampire on True Blood.

A recurring character on Teen Wolf, the TV series.

Some Matts in Maniac Cop, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, Race to Witch Mountain, and The Amityville Horror.

Compare that with the name Jack or David, each of which returns over 200 results and is featured in movies and shows you may actually have seen or at least heard of — which is weird, because Matthew is hardly rare in the real world.

Every year from 1981 to 2006, Matthew ranked among the top 5 boys’ names in the United States. It may never have hit No. 1 — damn you, Michael, Christopher, and Jacob! But that’s still an awful lot of IRL Matthews running around.

Many of them, of course, are actors. The names McConaughey, Damon, Broderick, Perry, LeBlanc, Modine, Fox, and even Lillard should not be unfamiliar to you. Point is, there’s a disparity between reality and Hollywood here. (Shocking, I know.)

You’d think screenwriters might latch onto Matthew for its historical resonance. From the Hebrew Matisyahu, the name means “gift of God.” Wouldn’t you like to see Alexander Payne or Terence Malick play with that?And, hey, Matthew was an apostle after all! Surely screenwriters and directors would enjoy bringing echoes of Matthew’s biblical identity into tales of powerful men and their followers?

But even in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), there’s no Matthew! Or, well, technically he’s there, credited as one of four “Other Apostles,” a category into which Luke, Simon, and presumably the lesser James were also tossed. Unsurprisingly, these apostolic extras were played by unknowns Mohammed Mabsout, Mokhtar Salouf, Ahmed Nacir, and Mahamed Ait Fdil Ahmed.

This is not to suggest that Matts have never been prominent enough characters to warrant star power. A few recognizable names pop up in the IMDB:

Josh Hartnett was Matt in Wicker Park.

Charlie Sheen was Matt in Red Dawn.

Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge — he was a Matt.

And did you know that Hooper, Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Jaws, had Matt as his first name? No, you probably didn’t. And that’s because, loath as I am to admit this,