Matt Dillon started his acting career as a teen idol, often acting in the young thug roles. But in his adult years, he has turned away from the definitive leading man roles, and has instead chosen roles that have left him playing a wide variety of interesting characters.

Dillon was born on February 18, 1964, and is the second of six children. Brother Kevin Dillon, one year younger, followed in his famous brother’s footsteps in becoming an actor. Matt and Kevin come from a creative family, as two of their great-uncles are famous artists – Alex Raymond who drew the Flash Gordon comic strip, and Jim Raymond who drew Blondie.

Producers knew they were on to something with the good-looking Dillon, and he was soon tapped for more roles. His second role was as a bully in the movie, My Bodyguard, as his character tortured a fellow student to the point he felt the need to hire a bodyguard, played by Adam Baldwin. The same year he appeared in yet another movie, this time in a more romantic type of role. It was Dillon’s character that Kristy McNichol lost her virginity to in Little Darlings.

These movies had Dillon’s face on many young teenage girls’ walls, and a few years later he starred in a Francis Ford Coppola movie with other young male pinups. In the movie adaptation of the S. E. Hinton novel, The Outsiders, Dillon starred with Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise. Even today this list of stars stands as quite impressive.

As he grew older, Dillon abandoned the thug roles, and despite his dark good looks, he didn’t pursue leading man roles either. His roles seem to have been picked with the idea of choosing interesting characters to portray. Dillon has said he prefers roles that involve a conflict of characters, and ones that are juicier parts, though he has noted that the work he is most proud of doesn’t always do as well at the box office, such as the movies Rumble Fish, Flamingo Kid, and Drugstore Cowboy.

Dillon received great reviews for his role as a drug addict in Drugstore Cowboy. He played this role with Kelly Lynch, as they worked together to rob drug stores and hospitals to support their habit. He followed this with a more successful movie, Singles, about young adults exploring the Seattle music scene, alongside Bridget Fonda, Kyra Sedgwick, and Eric Stoltz.

Dillon had somewhat of a dry spell as far as successful movies after this, but his career was resurrected with a role in the Farrelly brothers’ comedy Something About Mary, as he appeared alongside Ben Stiller and Dillon’s then girlfriend, Cameron Diaz, whom he had met while they were both filming movies in Michigan. This movie won him an MTV Movie award as Best Villain.

Choosing good character dramas finally paid off for Dillon with his role as a racist cop in the movie Crash, as he co-starred with Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, and Don Cheadle. Dillon’s role earned him a best supporting actor nomination at the Academy Awards, and it certainly helped the film win the Best Picture Academy Award as well.