Jeff Bridges - Biography

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To call Jeff Bridges "the most underappreciated great actor of his generation", as did Janet Maslin in her The New York Times review of "American Heart" (1992), has become something of a cliche in contemporary film criticism. Hailed for his relaxed, naturalistic performance style, he has remained an A-list leading man for over four decades without benefit of being a box-office champ. Furthermore, Bridges has accomplished this feat without resorting to the broad self-parody of contemporaries like Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. One would be hard pressed to define a typical Jeff Bridges role. Something of a character actor with leading man looks, he has built his reputation with a wide assortment of parts in various genres. He is simply his generation's Spencer Tracy, with the emotional depth and ability to take on complex, morally ambiguous characters and make it look so easy that people accuse him of playing himself.

Bridges made his first screen appearance at the age of four months, playing the infant in Jane Greer's arms in "The Company She Keeps" (1950), and reteamed later with her in "Against All Odds" (1984), a loose remake of "Out of the Past" (1947) with Greer portraying the mother of the character she essayed in the original. He and his brother Beau grew up playing drowning victims and the like on their actor father Lloyd's popular syndicated TV series "Sea Hunt" (1957-61). Bridges recalled to the London TIMES (March 1, 1999): "He'd always say, 'Do you want this part? You'll be gone from school for a couple of weeks.' And when you're eight years old, it's kind of fun." The brothers also popped up occasionally on "The Lloyd Bridges Show" (CBS, 1962-63), and watching his dad get typecast for life as the oxygen-tanked lead of "Sea Hunt", despite decades of impressive screen credits, strongly influenced Bridges to seek divergent parts rather than build a defining (and potentially limiting) screen persona along the lines of that of, say, Harrison Ford.

He emerged as a boyishly charming lead after bursting from the talented ensemble of "The Last Picture Show" (1971) for which he earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination as an engaging high school football hero coming of age in a small Texas town during the 50s. Bridges enhanced his image in a series of quality projects, beginning with John Huston's "Fat City", as a struggling boxer, and Robert Benton's directorial debut, "Bad Company" (both 1972), in which he played a likable, untrustworthy con artist who drifts into lawlessness in the post-Civil War West. He also brought a three-dimensional believability to moonshining, stock-car racing legend Junior Jackson in "The Last American Hero" and stood tall amidst such heavy timber as Robert Ryan, Fredric March and Lee Marvin in John Frankenheimer's "The Iceman Cometh" (both 1973), an American Film Theatre presentation of the Eugene O'Neill play.

Having grown in stature with each successive picture, Bridges was a revelation in Michael Cimino's directorial debut "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974), demonstrating his immense acting range while exuding a screen charisma that enabled him to steal the picture right out from underneath its star Clint Eastwood. His performance earned another Best Supporting Actor nod and predictions that he was about to become the next big superstar, but several ill-conceived pictures dampened Hollywood's enthusiasm, most notably the 1976 remake of "King Kong" and Cimino's studio-killing "Heaven's Gate" (1980). Although he appeared in small critical favorites like "Rancho Deluxe" (1975), "Winter Kills" and "The American Success Company" (both 1979) and "Cutter's Way" (1981), the fall-out from those out-sized box office bombs remained until things began to turn around after success of "Against All Odds".

1984 also saw Bridges earn his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his low-key portrayal of the Earth-bound alien "Star Man", kicking off a lifelong friendship with its director John Carpenter who gushed to the NEW YORK POST's Larry Worth, "He's the greatest, as an actor and a person. He's the best actor of his generation, bar none." Bridges enjoyed his greatest box-office success (to date) in the legal thriller "Jagged Edge" (1985), co-starring opposite Glenn Close as a charismatic, successful businessman accused of a high-profile murder. Completely convincing as the almost neurotically optimistic, indomitable, all-American entrepreneur in the Francis Ford Coppola-directed "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (1988), a project which enabled him to act again with his father, he then gave a complex performance as Jack Baker, a once celebrated piano prodigy reduced to entertaining in hotel lounges with his brother (played by Beau) in "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989). The film earned co-star Michelle Pfeiffer her second Oscar nomination, but some found Bridges even more impressive.

He continued to give strong, underrated performances in the 90s, often changing his look to suit his characters. For "Texasville" (1990), the sequel to "The Last Picture Show" set 30 years later, he reprised the role of Duane Jackson, Texas roughneck turned millionaire. Bridges put on 20 pounds to lend weight to his portrayal of a man trying to recapture his lost youth as he faces the end of the oil boom. Unfortunately, the actor's chemistry with Annie Potts as his wife couldn't save the film from failure. The understated angst of his' DJ Jack Lucas in the gentle fantasy "The Fisher King" (1991) provided an effective counterpoint to the exuberant Robin Williams. Though the picture earned Mercedes Ruehl a Supporting Actress Oscar as Bridges' girlfriend, it performed only so-so commercially, despite the presence of box-office favorite Williams. The actor grew his hair, donned a mustache and sculpted his physique for the respectfully reviewed indie "American Heart" (released theatrically in the USA in 1993), which also marked his producing debut. Bridges turned in a credible portrait of an ex-con trying to reconcile with his wayward son while living on the seamy side of Seattle.

While he won raves for his portrayal of a man transfigured by his survival of an air disaster in "Fearless" (1993), Bridges fared less well as a bomb squad cop pitted against Irish terrorist Tommy Lee Jones in "Blown Away" (1994), a critical flop which still did modest business. His follow-up, "Wild Bill" (1995), an eccentric "art" Western from writer-director Walter Hill, earned him some enthusiastic kudos but barely received a release. Although Bridges delivered the goods as the tough but fair skipper of a floating prep school in Ridley Scott's lusciously photographed "White Squall" (1996), the involving, well-acted, coming-of-age sea saga sank at the box office. Later that year, he demonstrated his comic timing opposite Barbra Streisand in her old-fashioned romantic comedy "The Mirror Has Two Faces", never losing his dignity as her buttoned-down platonic paramour. Bridges downplayed reports that the two argued a lot, insisting that she was very inclusive, wanted to know what he was thinking and encouraged him to participate in the process.

Bridges next did what he does best and made a 180 degree turn, transforming himself into the overweight, greasy-haired, burnt out, beach bum cum bowler of the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski" (1998). He was weirdly engaging as 'The Dude', described by the narrator as "the laziest man in Los Angeles County", living in a reefer-inspired 70s time warp, but was initially hesitant to take the role because, as a father of three teenage girls, he did not want it to appear as if he were condoning drug use. He left the Dude's bloated physique behind and slipped back into his rumpled professor guise for the thriller "Arlington Road" (1999), only this time as a perhaps rightfully so paranoid who teaches a course in domestic terrorism and discovers a little too easily that his new neighbors are up to no good. In that same year's "The Muse", he was underused as an Oscar-winning screenwriter who introduces his best friend (Albert Brooks) to Sharon Stone's title character. Rounding out the year, he and Stone reteamed as a millionaire who breeds race horses and his alcoholic wife in "Simpatico", adapted from the Sam Shepard play.

Bridges, an accomplished photographer who has had his evocative behind the scenes stills from films like "White Squall" published in Premiere, explored his longtime musical interest, releasing his debut album "Be Here Now" in 2000. He handled well the expected slings and arrows of critics wary of what was described as a vanity project, turning in a record marked by the very same Everyman dignity he always brought to his acting, and boasting such accomplished musicians as Michael McDonald and David Crosby as guest stars. Later that year, Bridges returned to the big screen, playing the seemingly simple but actually shrewdly manipulative US President in the political thriller "The Contender". Though his characterization wasn't based on any particular real-life Commander-in-Chief, it had added dimension due to Bridges' solid turn as the somewhat eccentric leader who seems to relish his power by catering to small whims, but who is really a fiercely political animal skilled at coming out on top.

The actor next played an earnest psychiatrist who doubts his own diagnosis when a seemingly delusional patient (Kevin Spacey) who thinks he is from another planet has a profoundly positive effect on others at the mental hospital in the charming 2001 sci-fi feature "K-Pax", directed by Iain Softley. In 2003, Bridges narrated "Lost in Mancha," a documentary on a Don Quixote film that went into production, but for a mulititude of reasons was never completed. Bridges was especially enjoyable in his next role, summoning a winning synthesis of his previous character Preston Tucker and his own father Lloyd to play Charles Howard, the wealthy, optimistic yet grief-tempered financier behind the famed racehorse of the early 20th Century for writer-director Gary Ross' "Seabiscuit" (2003). Although the brisk pace of the film did not allow Bridges to explore his character's extreme emotional depths, the actor effectively conveyed Howard's enteprenureal spirit. Almost simultaneously, Bridges appeared in the quirky comedy-drama "Masked & Anonymous" (2003), starring and co-written by Bob Dylan, who plays a singer-songwriting coming out of obscurity for a benefit concert. Bridges played Tom Friend, a jaded and bitter veteran music journalist covering the concert