Matthew Shear is a filmmaker and actor based in New York. His debut feature as writer-director, Fantasy Life, in which he stars opposite Amanda Peet, Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch and Bob Balaban, world premiered at SXSW 2025, where it won the Narrative Feature Audience Award. The film opens in New York on March 27 and plays nationwide from April 3. Shear also starred in Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, alongside Greta Gerwig, as well as in the limited series The Alienist, opposite Dakota Fanning and Daniel Brühl. His other credits include Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories, M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples, and The Boy Downstairs, opposite Zosia Mamet. (Photo by Benno Kling.)
