Jeff Bridges Admits He Was a ‘Reluctant Actor’ Early in His Career: ‘It Took Many Films Before I Could Get Comfortable’
Jeff Bridges isn’t like other leading men. So goes the tale for over 50 years and 70 films. Where other actors of his generation—Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson—brought volume and bravado, Bridges excelled in the shadows. A charming pretty boy turned weary and soulful iconoclast, his characters have never been showy. As The Dude in “The Big Lebowski” or Bad Blake in “Crazy Heart,” he’s moved into his roles and lived in them—“enough,” as one critic wrote as early as 1973, “to make a picture worth seeing.”
“I’m not sure what to make of all that,” Bridges told Variety at Film at Lincoln Center Monday evening, where the actor received the prestigious Chaplin Award. “It’s shocking for myself to think about how many films I’ve done,” he said. “Each film is like a little lifetime. I was a reluctant actor at first. It took many films before I could get comfortable, before I decided to make a career. Really, it’s just nice to get an ‘Atta boy.’”
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And so was the spirit Monday evening. Bestowed each year since 1972, the Chaplain Award honors the film industry’s most notable talent, offering (as all fundraisers like these do) lengthy and effusive consecrations of great actors. “What a dump!” Bette Davis once shouted from the stage, accepting her award in 1989.
But you wouldn’t know it from the lineup of co-stars who showed up to celebrate Bridges and introduce the actor on Monday, including Sharon Stone, Rosie Perez, Chris Pine, and Blythe Danner. Barbra Streisand, John Lithgow and brother Beau Bridges offered video messages during the ceremony. Actors like Cynthia Erivo, Sarah Paulson, and Kieran Culkin joined the audience.
Bridges himself—windswept even in a tux on the Upper West Side—kept, as one might imagine, his cool.
“Love and fear,” he said, accepting the award and riffing on what’s powered his career: “They don’t go away. They work together. They sort of polish us. Yea, I dig that. Mom and dad, they’re the reason I’m up here,” he continued, noting his famous actor parents, Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges. “Dad’s joy and mom’s send off: ‘Jeff, have fun and don’t take it too seriously.’ That’s the secret. Tonight I’ve had fun, and I haven’t taken it too seriously.”
Many of those who showed up to laude His Dudeness talked about that idea: His willingness to play. “It’d be so easy for him to be an intimidating movie star, but he just isn’t,” Perez, who was nominated for an Oscar in a 1993 career-making turn opposite Bridges in “Fearless,” told Variety before the ceremony. “He was so relaxed that it kind of pissed me off,” she laughed.
Danner, who wasn’t slated to appear on Monday’s bill but wandered onto the stage as if Lincoln Center had yanked her off the sidewalk in a chance encounter, made the evening’s most enjoyable and unexpected remarks. Perez, Pine and Stone gave enjoyable speeches, but Danner was Bridge’s senior.
“You were such a cute kid,” she said of her appearance alongside the actor in 1975’s “Hearts of the West.” “I don’t know why I thought it was your first film, but you looked like you were fourteen.”
“Even then I remember being in complete wonder how—before a very emotional scene was coming— you weren’t pacing around,” she recalled. “You were playing the guitar, laughing, telling stories. But then you flew: You hit every extraordinary emotional deep. I wondered how. I mean, I don’t think you went to acting school, did you?” she asked, looking for an answer. “You certainly never needed it!”
“It was such a fun film,” she continued. “Alan Arkin. I ruined so many takes laughing. And—who was the other guy?” she lobbed from the stage as if we weren’t anywhere at all.
“Andy Griffith!” Bridges yelled across Alice Tully hall.
As for what’s ahead: Bridges let slip on Lincoln Center’s “Film Comment” podcast Friday that he plans to appear in “Tron: Ares,” the third installment in the sci-fi franchise which Bridges first introduced in 1982. On Monday evening, the actor arrived at Lincoln Center just off the plane from Toronto, where the new film starring Jared Leto is being shot, he confirmed.
“I don’t want to give too much away,” he told Variety, “but Steve Lisberger, the source of the whole film, is involved and has given his stamp of approval for the movie.”
“It’s something to return to old work, to think about how and why we made things,” he finished. “A lot like I’m doing tonight.”
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