
Acting
Oct 9, 1984
New York City, New York, USA
Matthew Shear
Acting
Biography
Matthew Louis Shear is an American actor known for his work in independent film and frequent collaborations with director Noah Baumbach. He began his career with a small role in Taking Woodstock (2009) and appeared in Mistress America (2015), The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), and Marriage Story (2019), and played Lucius Isaacson on The Alienist (2018–2020). In 2025, he made his directorial debut with Fantasy Life, which he also wrote and starred in.
Feature Films (14)

A grief-stricken cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student. The two forlorn souls develop a special connection.
Between the Temples

After finding a gun on the beach, a young woman is caught up in a night of cascading misadventures as she teams up with her rich ex-boyfriend and his fiancée to return the gun to the Russian mob in exchange for her kidnapped dog.
Treasure Trouble

A college freshman cures her disappointment and loneliness by allowing herself to be pulled into the wacky schemes of her future stepsister.
Mistress America

A young woman is forced to reflect on her first relationship when she inadvertently moves into her ex boyfriend's apartment building.
The Boy Downstairs

An estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.
While We're Young

The narrator of our story, Nate, an emotionally detached statistician with a penchant for reducing everything to percentages and probabilities, guides us through the relationship of Ben and Sarah, chronicling its chance origins with the algorithm of a dating app. What is the probability of Ben reviving his relationship with Sarah?
The Statistical Analysis of Your Failing Relationship

A misanthropic 20-something gay visual artist, Mark, finds himself unwittingly in New York City after he lies to his mother about a job at a prestigious art gallery. He then takes a survival job babysitting for 6-year-old Milo, whose faith in Mark is empowering and ultimately, transformative.
Cubby

A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.
Marriage Story

A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.
Old

An anxious New York law school dropout stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist's three granddaughters and falls for the girls' mother, an actress in a rocky marriage.
Fantasy Life

An ordinary guy delves deep into counterculture, conspiracy theories and the like as he tries to discern the structure of society.
Don Peyote
Television & Series (3)

A romantic comedy anthology series which follows a different protagonist each season on the journey from first love to last love, with each half-hour episode chronicling one of their relationships.
Love Life

The owners of a dive bar in Brooklyn, Horace and Pete, along with bar regulars share their experiences and lives with each other while drinking or working at the bar.
Horace and Pete

New York, 1896. Police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt brings together criminal psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, newspaper illustrator John Moore and secretary Sara Howard to investigate several murders of male prostitutes.
