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.
Best Known As: The Dude from the movie The Big Lebowski
A Hollywood leading man since the early 1970s and a four-time Oscar nominee, Jeff Bridges somehow retains his reputation as an unheralded movie actor. The son of actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff grew up in showbiz: as a kid he appeared on his dad's underwater adventure series, Sea Hunt (1958-61). Then Jeff and his brother, Beau Bridges, became actors in their own right. Jeff's first big role was as the small-town Texas boy Duane in the 1971 Peter Bogdanovich film, The Last Picture Show, for which he was nominated for his first best supporting actor Oscar. His other Oscar nominations are for his supporting role in Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (1974, opposite Clint Eastwood); for his starring role in 1984's Starman; and for his supporting role in The Contender (2000, starring Joan Allen). An accomplished amateur photographer, painter and musician, Bridges is clearly not a regular guy, but that's how he often comes across on screen. His talent for playing a non-threatening everyman was especially useful for one of his best-known roles, as The Dude in the Coen brothers' 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski. Bridges's other notable films include the low-key thriller Cutter's Way (1981); the Disney-made, semi-animated Tron (1982); the Francis Ford Coppola-directed biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988); the rueful romance The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989); the creepy thriller The Vanishing (1993); the heartbreaking drama Fearless (1993); the jittery bomb gripper Blown Away (1994); and the inspirational horse drama Seabiscuit (2003).
Career Highlights: The Last Picture Show, The Big Lebowski, The Fisher King
First Major Screen Credit: Halls of Anger (1970)
Biography
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. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Jeffrey Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson) and actor Lloyd Bridges.[1][2] He has two older brothers, Beau and Garrett, and one younger sister, Lucinda. Garrett died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. He shared a close relationship with his brother, actor Beau Bridges, who acted as a surrogate father when their real father was busy with work.[3] He and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles.[4]
Bridges is an uncle of Jordan Bridges. He married Susan Geston in 1977. He met Geston during the shooting of the movie Rancho Deluxe which was filmed on a ranch where Geston worked as a maid.[5] The couple have three daughters: Isabelle (born in 1981), Jessica Lily (born in 1983), and Hayley Roselouise (born in 1985). He is also a known marijuana user; in an interview, he admitted to ceasing smoking during filming of The Big Lebowski, but has not "permanently kicked the habit."[6]
In 2000, he was nominated for his fourth Academy Award 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 plays the role of Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger in the 2008 Marvel motion picture, Iron Man.[10] In July 2008 and July 2009 he was shown in the Comic Con teaser for Tron Legacy, the upcoming sequel to Tron; leading fans to assume he would reprise the role of Flynn from the 1982 classic film.
Other work
In his off time while on set, he has opened up a serious business with technology. He began taking pictures on set during Starman, at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen. He has published many of these photographs online and in print titled "Pictures".[11][12][13][14][15]
Bridges is also a cartoonist. Some of his "doodles" have appeared in various films, such as K-PAX and The Door in the Floor (a short story-within-story by John Irving).
Bridges has performed voice-over work as well: he was behind Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" ad campaign, and has done all of the Duracell ads in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign (2006-current).
In the film The Contender, in which he co-starred, he recorded a version of Johnny Cash's standard "Ring of Fire" with Kim Carnes that played over the pivotal opening credits. As of 2008, the song has not been released commercially outside of the film.
