A tall and rangy, versatile and engaging actor, Matthew Modine made his screen debut as Rosanna Arquette's college boyfriend in John Sayles' "Baby, It's You" (1982). He shared the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award with the entire cast of Robert Altman's unjustly neglected "Streamers" (1983), in which he portrayed a Vietnam war recruit. Modine won widespread acclaim for his superb work as another Vietnam soldier, the severely withdrawn, schizophrenic title character of Alan Parker's "Birdy" (1984) and was at his self-effacing, ironic best in Stanley Kubrick's blistering, if uneven, Vietnam
