Background
Matthew Jerome Barr was born February 14, 1984 in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. He is the son of Mike Barr, a former football coach at Purdue University and Southern Methodist University, who is now in the real estate business, and DeDe Barr, a portrait artist.
Career
He is best known for his roles as Johnse Hatfield in Hatfields & McCoys with Kevin Costner, Mike Fleming in Commander in Chief, Ian Banks in One Tree Hill, Christopher Sullivan in the mystery-horror miniseries Harper"s Island, and Dan Patch in The CW"s series Hellcats. In Barr"s fourth grade, his family moved to Fairview, Texas, another Dallas suburb. Barr was active in the Allen High School theater program, and had major roles in many school plays and musical theater productions.
This included the role of Tommy in Meredith Willson"s The Music Manitoba, and a court jester in the school"s madrigal dinner.
While a senior at Allen High School, Barr learned that Richard Linklater was planning a film about football in Austin, Friday Night Lights. He auditioned for a role.
Although this movie ended up being put on hold for another two years and Richard Linklater was replaced by Peter Berg as director, Barr made some favorable impressions. Producer Ann Walker Mclay and Linklater, collaborator and director Clark Lee Walker offered him the lead role in their film Levelland that was being shot in Austin in the late spring and early summer of 2002.
Half a year after the filming of Levelland ended, in January 2003, Barr moved to Los Angeles, where his first acting job was a scene on the television show Emergency. Some of Barr"s roles include playing Ian Banks, Peyton Sawyer"s (played by Hilarie Burton) stalker on One Tree Hill.
Barr has also portrayed guest and recurring roles on popular television series Emergency, Bones, The O.C. and Commander in Chief. He starred as "David Stanley" in the direct to Digital Video Disc film, Protecting the King as Elvis Presley"s youngest step-brother. Barr appeared in the 2008 film The House Bunny as Tyler, one of the university"s students.
He portrayed David "Puck" Rainey, one of the alumni of The Real World: San Francisco, in Pedro, Nick Oceano"s 2008 biographical film on the life of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome educator Pedro Zamora.
In 2009, Barr costarred in the mystery/horror miniseries Harper"s Island as Christopher "Sully" Sullivan. Between 2009 and 2010 he guest starred in many television series, such as Castle, Trauma, Friday Night Lights, and Computer Society of India: Crime Scene Investigation.
Matt was cast as a series regular in the CW series Hellcats, playing Dan Patch in 2010. The series premiered on September 8, 2010.
However, after one full season the series was cancelled.
He also has a role as Billy "The Kid" Rhodes on the United States of America Network series Necessary Roughness in 2011. In 2012, Barr also assumed a leading role, starring in the Kevin Costner miniseries Hatfields & McCoys for the History Channel. He portrayed Johnse Hatfield, who fell in love with Roseanna McCoy.
Barr was drawn to this part due to the romance and tragedy surrounding the famous feud.
In 2014, Barr appears in a recurring role on Sleepy Hollow as Nick Hawley in Season 2.