In the pull of summer

Matthew BRODERICK stars in “Finding Amanda” with Brittany Snow. He is 46 and has been married to Sarah Jessica Parker since 1997. He was in a suite on the 18th floor of the Regency Hotel, the preferred Upper East Side home of studio publicist press days.

You’re rather gray!

I know. Yes. I got a big fright and I woke up and that was it. It’s getting sort of sudden. Actually it’s been coming on for some years, but only my hair colorist knew. I would sometimes dye it when I was doing a movie. But never on stage. I was fairly gray when I was doing “The Odd Couple.” Do you have any in your face yet?

Yeah. I screamed the other day. Silver!

That one was weird. I used to not shave. But it’s a little different when you have goat hair.

Are you working more than you want to be working?

No. I’m not. I worked a lot this last year or two. And I did a lot of smaller movies, which I enjoyed, but they’re just as hard as big movies or harder on the actor in a way, because you have more pages to do and less time sometimes. Lately I had a little time off. And I have, I think, this whole summer off, and so does my wife. So hopefully we’re going to have a real summer. I used to like to work all the time -- I like my breaks, I love traveling -- but particularly once you have a child, you start to be aware. This is his 5-year-old summer, and there won’t be another.

Is he weighing in on scripts?

I wish he would. He will critique a movie that he sees. But he’s very forgiving, you know. But he will describe in tremendous detail “Transformers” or the panda one, “Kung Fu Panda.” He loved that. I saw “Speed Racer” with him.

Did he like that one? It’s really candy-colored.

He seemed to like it. I grew up on the cartoon, so I was just very thrown that it was not the cartoon. But man, that was something. That was a crazy-looking movie.

You aren’t going to take him to the Hamptons for your break -- that’s no place for a child.

That’s where he is. Right now.

Dear God. What will happen to him out there?

Well, he’ll meet the people of the crust to which he ought to become accustomed. He’ll make connections, hopefully. Find out where to invest after I’m gone. He has a great time out there, we’re in Amagansett, we live on a street where there’s lots of children. So he gets a community. We went out there the other day, and these little girls were blowing up balloons that you attach a little engine to and they go up in the air. And there he was for two hours.

I guess the picture gets distorted sometimes and we just see drunk 25-year-old publicists out there.

Well, he’s too young and I’m too old, so we don’t do any of that.

Brittany Murphy didn’t transform you into a club-hopping jerk?

Brittany Snow.

There’s a lot of Brittanys right now.

But she’s a particularly lovely one. Not that any of them are less than lovely. What are we saying about her? No, she did not get me club-hopping. When I was there she was very serious. More prepared than I!

Are you glad that the era of “Sex and the City” is behind us?

Is it? We’ll see. I don’t see why they couldn’t do another one. I think it’s possible. You know I’m very glad it had such a nice climax. They worked so hard on that movie. And I was right there. And Michael Patrick King is a good friend, and I think he did such a good job.

No one’s successfully explained what it’s like to do a junket in one of these hotel rooms.

This is one day. I’ve done three-day ones. The print ones are OK. The 20-minute thing, half-hour is good. When I do 20 six-minute TV interviews in a row? That’s very strange. You’re really not sure if you’re saying what you just said or not. Or you don’t want to bore the camera guy, so you try to change the story a little. You know? You want to keep the room happy. So it’s confusing. Then at the end of the day I feel very tired for a little while. And I feel a little like I’m nothing. Which is strange. I mean, you are my analyst, I’m assuming. It’s not that you feel like you’re nothing -- but you can’t help but feel like, “Oh, that was my career.” Everything gets summed up into two sentences. “This is Ferris Bueller,” like that. I understand. But it’s a weird day.

I’d feel like if I tried to explain myself to a bunch of strangers all day --

By the time you get down the elevator, you’re like, well, I don’t know if that was worth it, that 26 years. But that’s the darker side! The other side is that I got free food.