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Early life

Phillippe was born Matthew Ryan Phillippe in New Castle, Delaware, the son of Susan, who ran a day care center in the family's house, and Richard Phillippe, who worked for DuPont. He has three sisters, Kirsten, Lindsay and Katelyn. Phillippe attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer, as well as earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do; he was also the Yearbook Editor in his senior year. At the age of fifteen, he became interested in an acting career, inspired by a neighbor's suggestion. A casting agent spotted Phillippe in a barbershop two years later, and began sending him to auditions in New York.

Career

Phillippe's acting career began with an appearance in ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. His character Billy Douglas, whom he played from 1992 to 1993, was the first gay teenager in a daily soap opera, causing a stir. After leaving the show, Phillippe moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared in a number of small parts in various television shows and movies, including 1996s White Squall.

Phillippe was cast in the 1997 horror film, I Know What You Did Last Summer, which co-starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The film was a success in October of that year, and led to Phillippe gaining wider renown and being cast in a few more high-profile films, including 54 in 1998 and 1999's Cruel Intentions, a modern retelling of the Choderlos de Laclos' novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The latter film, which also starred Phillippe's future wife, Reese Witherspoon, as well as his I Know What You Did Last Summer co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was a success among its intended teenage audience, cementing Phillippe's ability to play characters that require sex appeal.

In the years following, Phillippe appeared in the crime drama The Way of the Gun, starred as a famed software engineer in the thriller Antitrust, and co-starred in Robert Altman's critically-acclaimed Gosford Park, which featured several of Britain's most respected actors. Subsequently, Phillippe had supporting parts in the films Igby Goes Down (2002) and Crash (2005), which won the Oscar for Best Picture. His 2003 film, The I Inside, premiered on cable.

In 2006, Phillippe played real-life Navy corpsman John Bradley in the war film Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood and following the journey of the United States Marines who lifted the flag at the battle of Iwo Jima. Phillippe has said that the film was the "best experience" of his career because of its "personal meaning" to him, and that he would have "given [his] life" to fight in World War II, noting that both of his grandfathers fought in the war. Phillippe's role was positively received by film critic Richard Roeper, who specified that he thought it was Phillippe's best performance to date. Phillippe's most recent role was in the thriller Breach, in which he played FBI investigator Eric O'Neill opposite Chris Cooper. He has since commented that he believes Cooper to be "the best actor America has to offer". He next starred in several 2007 and 2008 films, including Chaos, in which he plays a police officer, Five Fingers, a drama set in Morocco, and the Iraq war film Stop-Loss, directed by Kimberly Peirce.

Phillippe and his long-time friends Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, and David E. Siegal run a production company called Lucid Films. Phillippe is becoming more actively involved in his films as a producer.

Personal life

In 1997, Phillippe attended a party given for actress Reese Witherspoon's 21st birthday. Upon meeting Witherspoon, Phillippe was reported to have spent all night talking to the young actress, with Witherspoon telling Phillippe "I think you're my birthday present". The following morning, Phillippe left California to film I Know What You Did Last Summer, and subsequently began a long-distance courtship with Witherspoon by mail, e-mail, and telephone. When Phillippe returned to Los Angeles, the couple continued dating and became engaged in December 1998. The following year, the pair starred in Cruel Intentions together. Phillippe and Witherspoon married on June 5, 1999, in a small ceremony on a plantation near North Charleston, South Carolina.

On September 9, 1999, Phillippe and Witherspoon had a daughter named Ava Elizabeth, after Phillippe's grandmother. Their son, Deacon Reese (named after Phillippe's distant relative, Deacon Phillippe, a baseball player) was born on October 23, 2003. The family resided in a gated community in Brentwood, California.

On October 30, 2006, Phillippe and Witherspoon released a statement announcing that they had decided to formally separate. After over seven years of marriage, Witherspoon filed for divorce from her husband on November 8, 2006, citing irreconcilable differences. In light of the couple's lack of a prenuptial agreement, she requested that the court refuse to grant spousal support to Phillippe, and asked for joint legal custody and sole physical custody of the pair's two children. Phillippe filed for joint physical custody of the children on May 15, 2007. He did not ask for spousal support, and did not block Witherspoon from seeking it from him. Phillippe has stated that following the divorce filing, he was physically distraught over the ending of his marriage. The couple's divorce was finalized October 5, 2007, according to court documents. Phillippe is currently dating Australian actress Abbie Cornish.

Phillippe is an avid fan of Philadelphia sports teams, most notably the Eagles and Phillies. He is also a longtime fan of The Howard Stern Show, having attended the landmark mock funeral of rival Philadelphia disc jockey John DeBella in the early nineties, ditching out of a school field trip to go to the funeral. During an appearance on March 20, 2008; he proclaimed himself a "big fan" of castmember Artie Lange, saying that he could relate to Artie's personal struggles, which the rest of the cast found odd, contrasting Phillippe's movie star good looks and lifestyle with Artie's constant weight problems and depression issues. Nevertheless, Artie thanked him for the praise and added that he was a fan of several of Phillippe's movies; specifically The Way Of The Gun and Flags of our Fathers. Ryan also revealed that he had paid $250 for a bust of Wack Packer Beetlejuice's head but never received it, later in the show, Beetlejuice's manager called in saying that he'd "look into it." One week later, he would attend an Artie Lange stand-up comedy performance in Los Angeles where he was invited backstage and cordially invited Stern staffer J. D. Harmeyer (noted for his socially awkward, "nerdy" personal life) to go clubbing with his entourage.