How Sarah Jessica Parker Really Met Matthew Broderick
Before they were a longtime Hollywood pair, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were teen stars in their own right.
Parker got her start on Broadway at a young age, and, by the time she was 14 years old, she'd landed the titular role in the classic hit musical "Annie."
By the 1980s, she became nationally known with a role on the sitcom "Square Pegs" before making a transition to movies in the 1980s, appearing in such films as "Honeymoon in Vegas" and "LA Story" (via Biography). Of course, she became a household name worldwide thanks to her leading role in HBO's groundbreaking "Sex and the City."
Broderick also began his career in theater as a teen, and, by his early 20s, he had already appeared in the Neil Simon hit "Brighton Beach Memoirs." After that, he made his own movie transition and, in 1986, starred in the title role of the teen classic "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (via The Famous People).
Broderick eventually went back to his Broadway roots, and that's how Parker would meet the man who became her husband.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were Broadway bound — and bound for each other
Broadway is where Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick started their careers, and it's also where they started their lives together.
Broderick was directing a play in New York, produced by the Naked Angels Theater Company, which just so happened to be owned by Parker's brothers, Toby and Pippen.
They introduced their sister to their play's director back in 1991 soon after she broke up with actor Robert Downey Jr., according to Women's Health. The pair hit it off; began dating; and, five years later, even got on a Broadway stage together to star in "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying."
"I'm so nervous acting opposite him," Sarah told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. "I don't know how we're going to manage this without laughing hysterically at each other. We do not discuss it. I don't even want to rehearse — I'm going to go on stage with a big blinder on my head — I don't know what I'm thinking."
The actors wed, and the rest is show biz history
A year after starring together on Broadway, the New York couple decided to get married in a lavish affair — but didn't tell their guests.
Instead, on May 19, 1997, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick told 100 of their closest friends and family they were throwing a big party at the Angel Orensanz Synagogue. But, when the guests showed up, they learned the party was really a wedding.
Parker even wore a black evening gown to make sure she didn't look the part of the bride when she took her vows, according to Women's Health.
Five years later, Parker and Broderick became parents for the first time when son James was born. Seven years after that, Parker gave birth to twin girls whom she and Broderick named Marion and Tabitha.
In 2010, Parker admitted she loved being a mom and having babies. "I would give birth as often as I could, if I could," she told Vogue. "I cherished all the milestones, the good and the bad."