Jeff Bridges

Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges (born December 4, 1949) is an American actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart.

Bridges is also a musician, a photographer, and an occasional vintner and a storyteller. He comes from a well-known acting family, and worked as a child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television's Sea Hunt. Some of his best-known movies include Tron, Fearless, Iron Man, Contender, TheThe Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, Fisher King, TheThe Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, Tron: Legacy, and The Big Lebowski.

Bridges earned his sixth Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit.

Early life

Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California December 4, 1949. He was born into a showbiz family, the son of actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson) and actor Lloyd Bridges.^[1][2] His older brother Beau Bridges is also an actor. He has two other siblings, younger sister Lucinda and brother Garrett. Garrett died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. Growing up, Bridges shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working.^[3] Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles.^[4] He attended University High School in Los Angeles.. At age 14, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of Anniversary Waltz.

After graduating high school, Bridges journeyed to New York where he studied acting at the famed Herbert Berghof Studio. Before becoming an actor he served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the late 1960s, and as a reservist in the early 1970s to avoid being sent to Vietnam.

Career

Film career

Jeff Bridges made his first screen appearance at the tender age of four months, playing Jane Greer's infant son in The Company She Keeps in 1950. In his youth, Bridges and Beau made occasional appearances on their father's show Sea Hunt (1958-1961) and the CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962-1963). His first major role came in the 1971 movie The Last Picture Show, for which he garnered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He co-starred in the 1972 film Fat City directed by legendary director, John Huston. He was nominated again for the same award for his performance opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1974 film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In 1976, he starred as the protagonist Jack Prescott in the first remake of King Kong, opposite Jessica Lange. This film was a huge commercial success, earning $90 million worldwide, more than triple its $23 million budget, and also winning an Academy Award for special effects.

One of his better known roles was in the 1982 science-fiction cult classic Tron, in which he played Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer (a role he reprised in late 2010 with the sequel Tron: Legacy). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1984 for playing the alien in Starman. He was also acclaimed for his roles in the thriller Against All Odds and the crime drama Jagged Edge. His role in Fearless is recognized by some critics to be one of his best performances.^[5] One critic dubbed it a masterpiece;^[6] Pauline Kael wrote that he "may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived".^[7] In 1998 he starred as what is arguably his most famous role, "The Dude" in the Coen Brothers' cult-classic film The Big Lebowski. He has stated in the past that he relates to "The Dude" more than any of his other roles.

In 2000, he received his fourth Academy Award nomination for his role in The Contender. He also starred in the 2005 Terry Gilliam movie Tideland, his second with the director (the first being 1991's The Fisher King). He shaved his trademark mane of hair to play the role of Obadiah Stane in the 2008 Marvel comic book adaptation Iron Man.^[8] In July 2008, at the San Diego Comic-Con International, he appeared in a teaser for TRON: Legacy, shot as concept footage for director Joseph Kosinski; this developed into a full 3D feature release in 2010.

In 2010, Bridges won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his role as Bad Blake in the film Crazy Heart.^[9] (Bridges is one of the oldest actors ever to win an Academy Award; he was also one of the youngest actors ever to be nominated. In 2010, he won his Oscar for Crazy Heart at the age of 60; in 1972, he was nominated for The Last Picture Show at age 22.)

Bridges at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival He received his sixth Academy Award nomination for his role in True Grit, a collaboration with the Coen brothers in which he starred alongside Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld. Both the film, and Bridges' performance as Rooster Cogburn, were critically praised. Bridges lost to Colin Firth, whom he had beaten for the Oscar in the same category the previous year. It marked the first time two actors had been nominated for the award for playing the same character; Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.

Other work

Bridges had been an amateur photographer since high school, and began taking photographs on movie sets during Starman, at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen.^[10] He has published many of these photographs online and in the 2003 Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges.^[11][12][13]

Bridges is also a cartoonist. Some of his "doodles" have appeared in films including K-PAX and The Door in the Floor. Bridges narrated the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2002), about the "unmaking" of a Terry Gilliam retelling of Don Quixote, tentatively titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which would have starred Johnny Depp as Sancho Panza and Jean Rochefort as the quixotic hero. Bridges also narrated the documentaries Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (2002, IMAX), Raising the Mammoth (2000, TV), and The Heroes of Rock and Roll (1979, TV). He also voiced the character Big Z in the animated picture Surf's Up.

Bridges has performed TV commercial voice-over work as well, including Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" advertisement campaign^[14] as well as the Duracell advertisements in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign.^[15]

On January 15, 2010 Bridges performed the song "I Don't Know" from Crazy Heart on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. In the film The Contender, in which he co-starred, Bridges recorded a version of Johnny Cash's standard "Ring of Fire" with Kim Carnes that played over the pivotal opening credits.

In February 2010, he was among the nearly 80 musicians to sing on the charity-single remake of We Are the World.^[16]

On October 24, 2010, Bridges appeared at Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit concert and played a set with Neko Case.

On December 18, 2010, Bridges hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live; he had hosted the show before in 1983 with his brother, Beau. With the December 18, 2010 episode, Bridges beat Sigourney Weaver's record for longest gap between hosting appearances on SNL (Weaver had a 24-year gap between her first time hosting in 1986 and her second time hosting in 2010, while Bridges had a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his most recent one, also in 2010).

On April 19, 2011, Country Music Television announced that Bridges had signed a recording contract with Blue Note Records/EMI Music Group. He will work with producer T-Bone Burnett and will release his debut album in 2011.^[17]

Personal life

Bridges married Susan Geston in 1977. They met on the movie shoot of Rancho Deluxe, which was filmed on a ranch where Geston was working as a maid.^[18] They have three daughters: Isabelle Annie (born August 6, 1981), Jessica Lily "Jessie" (born June 14, 1983), and Hayley Roselouise (born October 17, 1985).

He has a reputation for being one of the most likeable men in Hollywood. His Last Picture Show director Peter Bogdanovich has said of Bridges - "I've never, ever heard of him pulling a star turn or showing any ego. He was an absolute pleasure to work with". And his Big Lebowski co-star John Goodman said "It's like watching a diamond cutter, When you look at the diamond, you don't think of the work, you just notice there's no flaws". And The New Yorker summed him up very simply as "the best actor alive".

He describes himself as being "Extremely laid back". It was only during the filming of Iceman Cometh, TheThe Iceman Cometh that he decided to focus solely on acting, and make it his profession. Up until then, he'd been "all about drugs, sex and meditation". He has said, playing opposite such heavyweights as Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin and Frederic March, was where he first took acting absolutely seriously.

Bridges has studied Buddhism. He meditates for half an hour before beginning work on a film set.^[19]

Bridges is also a known cannabis user; in an interview, he admitted to giving up smoking marijuana during the filming of The Big Lebowski, but says he has not "permanently kicked the habit.".^[20] He is also a keen amateur photographer and painter.

Humanitarian efforts

In 1984, Bridges and other entertainment industry leaders founded the End Hunger Network, which has a long record of innovative and impactful initiatives aimed at encouraging, stimulating and supporting action to end childhood hunger. He embraces President Obama's initiative to End Childhood Hunger by 2015. He has teamed up with the Zen Peacemakers who operate a non-traditional soup kitchen that builds a cross-class community and provides food and wellness offerings with dignity.^[21] In November 2010, Bridges became spokesman for the No Kid Hungry Campaign of the organization Share our Strength. Its goal is to present and undertake a state-by-state strategy to end childhood hunger in the United States by 2015.^[22]

Filmography

See also

• List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeff Bridges

• Jeff Bridges at the Internet Movie Database
• Jeff Bridges at All Movie Guide
• Official website

This article uses material from the article Jeff Bridges from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.