Luke Matheny

Luke Matheny (born December 23, 1976) is an American actor, writer, and director. Matheny is an Academy Award winner, receiving the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for God of Love.

Early years Matheny was born in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of DiAnn and Mat Matheny, a pipe welder and furniture designer.

He later worked as a reporter and copy editor for a variety of trade magazines, including the respected television trade magazine, Electronic Media, and web sites in Chicago. His career includes stints as a synopsis writer for Netflix and as a story editor for the MTV series Made.

For his thesis project at NYU, Matheny wrote, directed and starred in the Academy Award-winning film, God of Love. The film is a comedy about a lounge-singing darts champion Raymond Goodfellow (portrayed by Matheny) "who finds his prayers are answered – literally – when he receives a mysterious package of passion-inducing darts." Matheny funded God of Love with a combination of student loans, his savings and some production grants, and shot the film in 10 days.

Academy Award On February 27, 2011, Matheny won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for "God of Love." The film had previously been rejected by Sundance and Slamdance.

Matheny's acceptance speech was considered one of the highlights of the Academy Awards telecast. Descriptions of Matheny's appearance at the award ceremony ranged from the merely descriptive ("mop-haired," ) to the critical ("somewhat shaggy-looking," "Brillo-headed," and "a vast black bouffant that makes him look like an untidy microphone.") and even laudatory ("follicularly fecund," the "God of Hair" ). TV Guide rated him as the "Worst Groomed" nominee. At the start of his acceptance speech, Matheny joked, "I should've gotten a haircut." The Salt Lake Tribune called him "a contender for the best acceptance speech." The Calgary Herald reported, "We didn't know who Luke Matheny was before he won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for God of Love, but we fell in love with him the moment the mop-haired director opened his mouth ... The young filmmaker's enthusiasm was infectious, and even the Hollywood elite applauded when Matheny thanked his mother ..."

Career since Matheny's first feature film writing credit, A Birder's Guide to Everything, a coming-of-age comedy that was co-written with Rob Meyer, was released by Focus World and Screen Media on March 21, 2014.

Matheny's feature film directorial debut, Lovesick (2014), a romantic comedy starring Matt LeBlanc, was released in theaters and on demand in 2015.

Between 2013 and 2015, Matheny also directed ten episodes of the comedy television series Maron.

In 2025, he wrote the script for the miniseries adaptation of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web.

Filmography

Film God of Love (2010) – Writer, Director, Actor (short) Lovesick (2014) – Director A Birder's Guide to Everything (2014) – Co-writer

Television Maron (2013–2015) – Directed 10 episodes Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street (2014) – Directed 11 episodes, wrote 4 episodes The Kicks (2016) – Directed 2 episodes Me and My Grandma (2017) – Directed all 6 episodes The Dangerous Book for Boys (2018) – Directed 2 episodes Ghostwriter (2019) – Directed 1 episode Black Jesus (2019) – Directed 2 episodes The Baby-Sitters Club (2020) – Directed 2 episodes Charlotte's Web (2025) – Screenwriter