Jeff Bridges had his first film role when he was just an infant, in the movie, The Company She Keeps; his mother, Dorothy, and brother, Beau, also had uncredited roles in the same picture. His break-out role, however, was that of Duane Jackson in The Last Picture Show (1971). He went on to play in dozens of movies, managing to avoid type-casting, by choosing an eclectic array of roles.
Bridges has been nominated six times for Academy Awards, for Starman, The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Contender, Crazy Heart and a remake of True Grit. He won the Best Actor award in 2010 for his role as Bad Blake, the hard-drinking country singer in Crazy Heart.
Bridges is an accomplished photographer, likes to paint and sketch, and plays the guitar. He provided the pen and ink illustrations for the book he published in his role as a writer of spooky children's stories, in The Door in the Floor.
Bridges, whose father Lloyd and brother, Beau, are both well-known actors, is married to Susan Geston. They have three daughters.
The son of actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff Bridges made his screen bow as a petulant infant in the arms of his real-life mother, Dorothy, in the 1950 Jane Greer melodrama The Company She Keeps; his troublesome older brother in that film was played by his real older brother Beau. The younger Bridges made a more formal debut before the cameras at age eight, in an episode of his dad's TV series Sea Hunt.
After serving in the Coast Guard reserve, the budding actor studied acting at the Herbert Berghof school. While older brother Beau was developing into a character player, Bridges, thanks in equal parts to his ability and ruggedly handsome looks, became a bona fide leading man. He had his first major success with a leading role in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Two years later, he won yet another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Bridges worked steadily throughout the rest of the 1970s, starring in a number of films, including Hearts of the West (1975) and Stay Hungry (1976). The 1980s brought further triumph, despite starting out inauspiciously with a part in the notoriously ill-fated Heaven's Gate (1981). In 1984, Bridges won yet another Oscar nomination for his leading role in Starman and continued to find acclaim for his work, in such movies as The Morning After (1986) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). The latter featured Bridges and brother Beau as struggling musicians, as well as Michelle Pfeiffer in a performance marked by both the actress' own talent and her ability to roll around on a piano wearing a figure-hugging red velvet dress.
Bridges began the 1990s with Texasville, the desultory sequel to The Last Picture Show. Things began to improve with acclaimed performances in Fearless (1993) and American Heart (1995) (the latter marked his producing debut), and the actor found commercial, if not critical, success with the bomb thriller Blown Away in 1994. More success followed, with a lead role in the Barbra Streisand vehicle The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and as a hapless and perpetually stoned bowling aficionado in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998). In 1999, Bridges returned to the thriller genre with Arlington Road, playing the concerned neighbor of urban terrorist Tim Robbins, and then switched gears with Albert Brooks' comedy drama The Muse. In addition to his acting achievements, Bridges has also written some 200 songs, a talent which he memorably incorporated in The Fabulous Baker Boys.
Bridges delivered a typically strong performance in 1999's Simpatico, which featured the actor as a horse-breeder embroiled in a complicated scam orchestrated by a once good friend, while The Contender (2000) found him playing a happy-go-lucky U.S. President suddenly forced to decide if his Vice Presidential candidate's rumored sexual escapades will affect his ultimate decision. Though K-PAX (2001) fared badly in theaters, Jeff's performance as Kevin Spacey's character's psychiatrist was solid, as was his role of a soft-spoken kidnapping victim in director Dominique Forma's Scenes of the Crime. 2003 was a polarizing year in terms of critical success -- despite an A-list cast including Bridges himself, Penelope Cruz, and Jessica Lange, Masked and Anonymous went unseen by most, and disliked by the rest. Luckily, Seabiscuit catapulted Bridges back into Hollywood's spotlight, as did Tod Wiliams' Door in the Floor, based on John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year.
In 2008, Bridges landed the plum role of the bad guy in the box-office blockbuster Iron Man, but it was his turn as fading country music star Bad Blake in Crazy Heart that earned him the accolades that had eluded the respected actor throughout his career. For his work in that film Bridges captured the SAG award, the Golden Globe, and his fifth Oscar nomination -- marking his second nod in the lead category 25 years after his first for Starman.
The next year Bridges would be up for the Best Actor award again, this time for the way he tackled one of John Wayne's iconic role's, Rooster Cogburn, in the Coen brother's hit remake of True Grit. That same year, he would return as Kevin Flynn in the sequel Tron: Legacy.
Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California on December 4, 1949. He is son of showbiz parents, actor Lloyd Bridges.[1][2] and actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson). His older brother, Beau Bridges, is also an actor. He has a younger sister, Lucinda, and had another brother, Garrett, who 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 graduated from University High School (Los Angeles, California) in 1967. At age fourteen, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of Anniversary Waltz.
Bridges made his first screen appearance at the age of four months in The Company She Keeps in 1950. In his youth, Bridges and brother Beau made occasional appearances on their father's show Sea Hunt (1958–1961) and the CBSanthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962–1963). His first major role came in the 1971 film The Last Picture Show, for which he garnered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.[6] He co-starred in the 1972 critically acclaimed neo-noir boxing film Fat City, directed by legendary director, John Huston. He was nominated again for Best Supporting Actor for his performance opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1974 film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.[6] In 1976, he starred as the protagonist Jack Prescott in the first remake of King Kong, opposite Jessica Lange. This film was a 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 fictioncult classicTron, 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.[6] He was also acclaimed for his roles in the thriller Against All Odds (1984) and the crime drama Jagged Edge (1985). His role in Fearless (1993) is recognized by some critics to be one of his best performances.[7] One critic dubbed it a masterpiece;[8]Pauline Kael wrote that he "may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived".[9] In 1998, he starred as what is arguably his most famous role, "The Dude", in the Coen Brothers' cult-classic film The Big Lebowski.[6] He has said that he relates to "The Dude" more than any of his other roles.[citation needed]
Referring to his career as an actor and his passion for music, Bridges says, "I dug what an actor did, but it took me a while to feel it, to truly appreciate the craft and the preparation. Plus, I was still playing music a lot, and I guess I had a hard time choosing: was I an actor or a musician, or could I be both?"[13]
Bridges studied piano at a young age strongly encouraged by his mother.[14] He released his debut album Be Here Soon on January 1, 2000. In 2005, Bridges, known as "The Dude" in the film Big Lebowski, showed up at a Lebowski Fest in Los Angeles singing and playing acoustic guitar of the film's theme song written by Bob Dylan, "Man in Me".
Bridges plays guitars such as: Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentlemen Model G6122-1959.[14]
Testimonials
"He set up a little recording studio in his trailer and we would go in and work on songs together, singing harmonies all the time." Karen Allen, when filming Starman in 1984.
"Jeff was a lot of fun to have around. He's a fabulous musician so he always had a guitar with him on set." Glenn Close, in reference to filming the 1985 movie, Jagged Edge.[18]
Other work as
Photographer
Jeff Bridges has been an amateur photographer since high school, and began taking photographs on film sets during Starman, at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen.[19] Since 1980, he began photographing on and off set shot with his favorite camera, a Widelux F8. He published many of these photographs online and published a book in 2003 entitled, Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges.[20][21][22][23]
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 had previously appeared in Gilliam's "The Fisher King." 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 at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards.
Bridges has performed TV commercial voice-over work as well, including Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" advertisement campaign[24] as well as the Duracell advertisements in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign.[25]
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).
Personal life
Bridges married Susan Geston in 1977.[26] They met on the film shoot of Rancho Deluxe, which was filmed on a ranch where Geston was working as a maid.[6][27] 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 became a grandfather on March 31, 2011, when Isabelle gave birth to a daughter, Grace. Jeff once stated, "I had a great '70s. Today, being a parent with three daughters, I look back on it thinking, Oh, man, the things I did!" [28]
Bridges has studied Buddhism. He meditates for half an hour before beginning work on a film set.[29]
In 1984, Bridges and other entertainment industry leaders founded the End Hunger Network aimed at encouraging, stimulating and supporting action to end childhood hunger. He supports 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.[30] 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.[31]
Lady in the train terminal with the two unruly kids is Dorothy Bridges, the wife of actor Lloyd Bridges. And the tots are Dorothy and Lloyd's sons Beau and Jeff.
The Lost Ones episode. Season 1, Episode 28. Airdate: Saturday July 19, 1958
The Birthday Present episode. Season 1, Episode 32. Airdate: Saturday August 16, 1958
Water Nymphs episode. Season 3, Episode 2. Airdate: January 16, 1960
Pirate Gold episode. Season 3, Episode 14. Airtime: April 9, 1960
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