We all know that Jeff Bridges is the Dude, or His
Dudeness, or El Duderino for those not into that “whole
brevity thing.” These are nicknames he acquired through
his role as the slacker hippie in The Big Lebowski, the 1998 cult film that
finally gave the actor a “persona” that he lacked throughout
much of his career. “A lot of people dig the Dude,” Bridges
observes, and he has indulged them a bit with Dude-like
pronouncements, such as his claim that his recent Oscar win
might lead to world peace, and accepting the award in a blissful
mood that gave rise to rumors he was stoned (he wasn’t). But
long before the Dude, Bridges actually did have a persona, that
of an actor who always liked to “shake it up and keep my own
persona slightly confusing. That way people will be able to slip
me into the character at hand.”
It could be said that he slipped into the acting
profession. Born
December 4,
1949 in Los Angeles, California, his father was Lloyd Bridges,
an actor best-known for his role as skindiving troubleshooter
Mike Riggs on TV’s Sea Hunt, and as the airport manager
(“I sure picked the wrong day to give up amphetamines”) in
1980's Airplane. “He loved what he did and wanted to turn
his kids onto it,” Jeff said of his father. At the age of four
months, Jeff made his film debut as Jane Greer’s infant son in
The Company She Keeps, and later made several appearances
on Sea Hunt, as did his older brother, Beau. “Whenever
there was a part for a kid, Dad would say, ‘Do you want to get
out of school for the day?’”
It wasn’t until 1970, shortly after graduating from
Palisades
Charter High School, that he made his “official” debut in
Halls of Anger, as the lone white student at a high school
rife with racial problems. Only a year later, at age 22, he was
cast by Peter Bogdanovich as Duane, the jock in the small Texas
town of Anarene, in The Last Picture Show. One of the
most acclaimed films of its year, it earned eight Oscar
nominations, including one for Bridges as best supporting actor.
“It was absolutely thrilling when I got that part,” he recalled.
“For me, that film stands alone. It’s not like any other movie I
can think of. It just hangs there by itself.”
Success had its downside. “I feel so guilty about my
career, man,” he told The New York Times in 1972. “I know
I wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t the son of Lloyd
Bridges.” His guilt took the form of rebellion, which included
growing a beard and letting his hair grow. “My father says, ‘Cut
your beard and cut your hair,’ and I yell at him, ‘I’m not going
to do that, man.’”
His rebellion extended to his career. As a boy, Bridges
thought acting was fun and an excuse to skip school, but “later
on, like most kids, I didn’t want to do what my parents wanted
me to do. I wanted to do music, or painting, or something else.”
For someone who didn’t particularly want to act, he was finding
himself in demand for some prestigious projects. In 1972, he was
cast as a young boxer opposite Stacy Keach in John Huston’s
Fat City, and he had the lead in Robert Benton’s little seen
but critically praised Bad Company. The next year, he was
Junior Jackson, the stock-car racer of The Last American Hero,
based on a famous article by Tom Wolfe.
He didn’t commit himself to the idea of an acting career
until joining Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Fredric March in John
Frankenheimer’s 1973 film version of
Eugene
O’ Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, one in a series of heavy
duty literary properties brought to the screen by the American
Film Theater on a subscription basis. “That project was a
turning point in my life. That was the film where I decided that
I could make acting the focus of my career and bring my other
interests, like music, art, photography, et cetera, to it.”
Bridges told The New York Times that it was “really
heavy” working with such a high-powered cast, and “I came away
from that experience with the certainty that acting is what I
truly wanted. You know I found out those big guys were just as
afraid as I was, and that fear is all a part of acting: it’s
part of the fuel actors use to do what we do. I’ve been hooked
ever since.”
At a time when Clint Eastwood was the world’s biggest
box-office draw but all but ignored by the Academy Awards,
Bridges became the first person ever acknowledged with an Oscar
nomination (as best supporting actor) for an Eastwood flick, the
engagingly eccentric Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, directed
by a first-timer, Michael Cimino, who also wrote the script. In
The New York Times, Howard Thompson summed it up as “a
funny, tough-fibered crime comedy with an unobtrusive edge of
drama,” and made note of Bridges’ “impish exuberance.”
Bridges followed it with a trio of critically respected but
commercially disappointing projects. Rancho Deluxe,
Hearts of the West, and Stay Hungry came and went. If
only that had been true of King Kong. Dino De Laurentis’
much ballyhooed remake of the 1933 classic gave Bridges a change
to play the hero. Too bad the movie was so laughable that the
only heroism required was agreeing to appear in it. Though a
box-office hit, most of the attention was focused on either the
ape or sexy Jessica Lange, which seemed fine with Bridges. “I
hope I don’t have too strong a film image, ugh,” he told The
New York Times. “The stronger the image, I believe, the more
it takes away from the acting possibilities. It’s like blowing
your cover if you’re a secret agent.”
One would have had to be a secret agent to find any virtue
in his next film, Somebody Killed Her Husband, the
thriller that was supposed to turn TV phenomenon Farrah Fawcett
Majors into a movie star. It did no such thing, and Bridges,
rarely panned by critics, came in for a few barbs. “He works so
hard at being winsome that he inadvertently parodies Richard
Dreyfuss’ performance in The Goodbye Girl,” Frank Rich
sneered in Time.
The next few years found Bridges headlining several films
that, though initially failing to find an audience, would become
cult favorites, revered by a small but enthusiastic following.
First up was Winter Kills, a conspiracy thriller with one
of the most amazing casts ever assembled. Elizabeth Taylor, John
Huston, Sterling Hayden, Anthony Perkins, Richard Boone, Toshiro
Mifune, Eli Wallach, Dorothy Malone and Ralph Meeker were all
attracted to director William Richert’s sometimes suspenseful,
often preposterous, and always entertaining adaptation of
Richard Condon’s novel. Bridges played the younger brother of an
assassinated president modeled on JFK, who begins his own
investigation into the crime when evidence of a second gunman
emerges. “It doesn’t make a bit of sense,” Janet Maslin wrote in
The New York Times, “but it’s fast and handsome and
entertaining, bursting with a crazy vitality all its own.”
Surprisingly, Heaven’s Gate also has its admirers,
particularly abroad where it was hailed as a masterpiece, but
only after laying such a colossal egg in
America that
it earned a reputation as one of the biggest bombs of all time.
Michael Cimino’s ambitious Western was so costly that it brought
down its studio, United Artists, and made the Oscar winning
director of The Deer Hunter a Hollywood pariah. Had it
been more modestly budgeted, it might have been seen for what it
is: an interesting and offbeat Western about a war between
greedy cattle barons and the immigrants who they fear are taking
over their land. The film’s failure didn’t seem to hurt Bridges,
but then his role was minor compared to those of Kris
Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, and Christopher
Walken.
Cutter’s Way, originally titled Cutter and Bone, may have fared
better had it not been released by United Artists, the studio
responsible for Heaven’s Gate. A character study wrapped
in a fairly standard murder mystery, it cast Bridges a boozing
lothario whose best-friend, played by John Heard, is a manic
Vietnam vet who tries to clear him of murder.
Then there was Tron, another film that was a victim
of poor timing. In the Disney production, Bridges played a
programmer who is sucked into a computer game. It was released
in the summer of 1982 when movie screens were dominated by
science-fiction, but with competition from E.T. and
Star Trek II, Tron, like Blade Runner, only
found an audience later through home video.
The 1980s proved a prolific decade for Bridges. Reviewing
the noir-ish Jagged Edge in The New York Times,
Janet Maslin thought Bridges “gives what may be the only
ordinary performance of his career” as a murder suspect defended
by Glenn Close, but thought he was “unexpectedly well-suited to
(the) romantic fall-guy role” in Against All Odds, a
remake of the noir classic Out of the Past.
He returned to science-fiction with 1983's Starman,
for which he received his third Oscar nomination, his first in
the leading best actor category. “How do you create an alien?”
he wondered. “I thought about some of the crazy people I’ve
known who I thought might be alien. I observed my
three-and-a-half-year-old and 20-month-old daughters because I
wanted to have their innocence, the ways kids make a mistake
without knowing it’s a mistake.”
Critic Janet Maslin opened her review of the film with an
almost prophetic compliment: “If Starman doesn’t make a
major difference in Jeff Bridges’ career, Mr. Bridges is
operating in the wrong galaxy.” Maslin felt that only Bridges
could have believably played the role because of his “blend of
grace, precision and seemingly offhanded charm.” Of course, the
film didn’t make that much of a difference in his career. Sure,
it got him an Oscar nomination and a lot of critical praise, but
he’d already had both. The film did not launch him into the
stratosphere. He remained a respected actor, a leading man, but
not quite a superstar.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
had little
impact either, despite the presence of Francis Ford Coppola
behind the camera. The true story of the man who built a modern
automobile, but was successfully defeated by the automotive
behemoths of
Detroit
and their Washington lobbyists, it was, in Roger Ebert’s view,
“not so much about the car as about the man, and it is the man
that he fails to deliver.” But once again, Janet Maslin was
generous in her praise, saying the actor “gives Tucker’s
optimism great charm, then turns it into something genuinely
heroic once it crashes head-on into the exigencies of American
business.” For the first time as an adult, Bridges had the
chance to act with his father whom Coppola cast as a Senator
working for the opposition.
The family ties were even stronger in The Fabulous Baker
Boys. Jeff and older brother Beau Bridges starred as a pair
of piano playing brothers both of whom are smitten with the
sultry singer they add to their act. In the latter role,
Michelle Pfeiffer earned an Oscar nomination.
He kicked off the ‘90s by joining Robin Williams in Terry
Gilliam’s The Fisher King. Bridges plays a DJ overcome
with guilt after one of his rants sets off a madman who open
fires on a bar. He finds redemption by helping a deranged
homeless man (Williams) in his quest for what he believes is the
Holy Grail. In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers observed that
Bridges “seems juiced by playing this arrogant bastard; he’s
rarely been better,” but one imagines the two leads could have
switched roles and still been effective.
The rest of the decade was devoted to such intriguing if
unsatisfying fare as American Heart, Fearless, and
The Vanishing, as well as the big-budget flop Wild
Bill. He also appeared alongside Barbra Streisand in her
self-directed The Mirror Has Two Faces, and again with
his dad, and Tommy Lee Jones, in the dreary Blown Away.
No one, least of all Bridges, realized it at the time, but
1998’s The Big Lebowski would provide him with the
signature role that had eluded him, and which he seems to have
avoided, during most of his career. Directed by Joel and Ethan
Coen, the bizarrely funny tale is almost impossible to describe.
It doesn’t really have a plot. Instead it is, as Roger Ebert
noted, “about an attitude, not a story.” Suffice it to say,
Bridges plays the Dude, described at one point as the laziest
man in
Southern
California, who seems to have been freeze-dried in the peace and
love era of the 1960s and thawed out in the ‘90s. He wears a
goatee, a pair of large Bermuda shorts, a bathrobe and
flip-flops, and speaks his own language. What does he do for
recreation? “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid
flashback.”
During its initial release, The Big Lebowski made
approximately two million dollars more than its $15 million
budget, but through the years has inspired an annual gathering
of rabid Dude admirers, the Church of the Latter-Day Dude,
several books, and even shops specializing in Dude-inspired
clothing and paraphernalia. Ray Preston, the proprietor of one
such shop in
New York,
explains that “One day I put these Big Lebowski shirts in
the store as a joke. Turns out they were the only things that
sold consistently.”
As Bridges told The Guardian, “I didn’t want to
develop too strong a persona.” He remembered how his father was
typecast as a skin-diver in Sea Hunt and wanted to avoid
that trap. “So I set out to mix it up as much as I could. That’s
partly for my own enjoyment, but it also sends a message to the
financiers. If I can play different things, I get sent different
things.”
Mixing it up meant following the Dude with the President -
of the United States, that is - in The Contender, for
which he received another best supporting actor Oscar
nomination.
If he wasn’t known for having big box-office hits, that began to
change in the millennium. 2003’s
Seabiscuit, the true life depression-era saga of a horse
that inspires the nation by winning against all the odds, not only scored a best picture nod at the Oscars,
but was a major hit with the public. The true life
depression-era saga of a horse that inspires the nation by
winning against all the odds. In 2008, Iron Man
resuscitated Robert Downey, Jr’s career, and also gave Bridges a
rare chance to play the villain.
Finally, on his fifth Oscar nomination, and second as best
actor, Bridges, often considered underappreciated, won the gold,
as well as a slew of other awards, for his role as the broken
down country singer, Bad Blake, in Crazy Heart. “You
always kind of start with yourself, see what aspects of yourself
can fuel the part,” he told Kris Tapley in explaining his
approach to a role. In some ways, Bad Blake didn’t require much
of a stretch. He had always loved music, played guitar, sang and
wrote songs. One of his more obscure credits was writing and
singing the song, “Lost in Space,” heard over the closing
credits of 1969’s John and Mary, a love story starring
Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow. Now, after his success with
Crazy Heart, Bridges is recording an album produced by
T-Bone Burnett and planning to make some live appearances.
“I’ve been involved in two big flop Westerns,” he said in
2001, referring to Heaven’s Gate and Wild Bill. “I
don’t know if Americans still care about Westerns. I hope they
do. There are some wonderful ones still to be made.”
Indeed, Americans do care about Westerns when they are as
wonderful as 2010's True Grit. The 1969 original won an
Oscar for John Wayne whose role of the one-eyed marshal, Rooster
Cogburn, was now being offered to Bridges. Could Bridges fill
the Duke’s boots? Would he or any actor even consider making the
attempt?
“I wasn’t really playing that role,” Bridges told Time.
“One of the things I asked the Coen brothers when they asked me
to come on board was why they wanted to make True Grit
again. They said, the movie we’re making is referring to the
book by Charles Portis. We’re not concerned with doing a remake
of the movie. That was a relief to me because I didn’t have to
get into the Duke’s boots.”
Actually, Bridges was playing that role, and though
the Duke cast a long shadow, Bridges managed to make Rooster his
own without stepping on his predecessor’s oversized boots, or
being trampled under them. His Cogburn was not as larger than
life as Wayne’s, and his swagger may have been less
intimidating, but it was a classic performance, one that brought
him a second consecutive Oscar nomination as best actor.
At the same time that Bridges was reviving another actor’s
role, he was reprising one of his own in Tron: Legacy, a
sequel to his 1982 film. “What got me to the second one is
pretty much what got me to the first one, and that was that I
wanted to mess around with all the new technology that was
available to my industry. Of course, the technology in this new
one makes the old one look like a black-and-white TV show.”
Music and acting are only two of his passions. He is also a
committed visual artist who takes photographs on the set of his
films and presents the personnel with an album of memories after
every shoot. He is also committed to the Hunger Network.
“People are working at jobs that pay so little that they can’t
pay the rent and buy enough food,” he reports on his web
site. “35 million people are hungry or don’t know where their
next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children.”
When asked by Time if he ever tires of references to
The Big Lebowski, Bridges insisted he does not. “A lot of
people dig the Dude.” And even more people dig Jeff Bridges.
by
Brian
W. Fairbanks