What Is Jeff Bridges Afraid Of?
“I think it had to do with fear. When you just don’t have the strength, then you have an opportunity to let off some of that stuff. And then you realize you can do that any time you want. That fear thing: you can cause it. That’s what acting is all about.
“Sometimes you need . . . sometimes you’ll subject yourself to staying up for three days or not eating just so you can assume that fear. You want to get next to it, to find out what the fuck it is. I put myself in these positions. And once I get it out I feel very empty and the emptiness feels very good. It’s catharsis.
“You can use that for acting. When I was 20, I did a movie called Halls of Anger, about busing white kids into a black school. I play a guy who tries to participate and adapt. He goes out for sports, tries to be friendly. And they keep beating the shit out of him. He keeps coming back and the black kids keep beating the shit out of him. And then there is this last scene that I have with Calvin Lockhart, who plays the boy’s principal. He tells me to stick with it, to not leave the school. It was a big emotional scene for me. And I really happened to get off. I had a cathartic experience doing the scene. We filmed for half a day and I really got empty. And it taught me a lesson: a cathartic scene for the actor is not necessarily a cathartic scene for the filmgoer.
“The first time I saw Halls of Anger was in the auditorium in a black high school. And my scene comes up. And I thought the editing was, well, not right. I’m talking to the principal — ‘I can’t do it, I can’t’ — and I’m not crying or anything. Lockhart says a few lines and then all of a sudden — bam — they cut to me at the peak of my emotional come. The last time you see me, I’m [makes a composed face] and the next time [makes a horribly contorted face]. And everyone in the audience just laughed. The whole auditorium. When I got up I left skin on the chair, I was so fried.”
Earlier in his career Jeff was in the Coast Guard Reserve, and when his boot-camp time came up, he “got really tight with this guy Don Harris, a chaplain. We arrived at camp and a guy comes out and calls us assholes and fuckheads and says that we belong to him. They take you in a room and take all your clothes and possessions and mail them back to your home. You’re nothing but your naked skin and your head’s all shaved and everybody’s scared. Then Sunday comes and you’re in church and Don Harris says, ‘When you’re in here, you’re not in the service.’ That’s all I needed. He got together with me and a couple of other guys. We formed a group, just like in high school.”
There seemed to be a pattern developing, this dependence on a charismatic older man. When I asked Jeff about that, he agreed that it was something “in me. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it. We cast our own plays, sort of. I saw a lot of my father. He was acting a lot, but acting is good because there’s also a lot of time when you’re not working and can do some extensive hanging out with your kids. I have one father who is my father and the basis for all these other fathers. But, uh, I think we all have fathers and mothers and children in our life. Some people aren’t as aware of it as others.”
The next person Jeff “got tight” with was Burgess Meredith. “I’ve just recently been drawn close to him again, but 10 years ago we did a movie in Hong Kong. It was called The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go, and Burgess wrote and directed it. I played a James Joycean rock star AWOL from Vietnam. I wrote and played some music in that. The film was one of those independent things and as of now it won’t ever be released.
“I did The Last Picture Show after that, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to be an actor. Not even when I got the Academy Award nomination. I made up my mind about that during The Iceman Cometh. That was American Film Theater. My agent called and said, ‘You gotta do this, Jeff, it’s class.’ They had Robert Ryan, Frederick March, Lee Marvin — an incredible cast. I decided, as an experiment, I would put myself in that situation. Trying to get right up next to the fear again. Because these guys were the actors, guys I was maybe a little intimidated by, guys I admired. Most of my scenes were with Robert Ryan and he taught me a lot. And it felt good. After that I was pretty much committed to acting.”
Jeff Bridges earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and managed to get himself into a “weird situation” before the awards ceremony. “My dad said, ‘If you go to the Academy Awards with us in this car, this Gremlin, I get the car free.’ That just turned my head all around. You know — the holiness of the awards — and I’m going to step out of a fucking Gremlin? With my mother and father? To be faced with that kind of weird situation. My brother Beau keeps teasing me and teasing me and finally I said, ‘Okay, fuck it, let’s go.’ It ended up that my mother and father and brother and his wife and me and my lady all — six of us — all ended up smashed into this Gremlin. And the coup de grâce: I borrowed my friend’s video camera to film the entire experience, from the car right up to that hallway where Army Archerd interviews you. And I’d be shooting him interviewing me.
“We’d all been drinking champagne at my parents’ house and my brother was driving and he kept saying, ‘Jeff, stop wasting film, the light’s not right.’ Of course, in the film he’s in perfect focus and the light is just right. But the highlight of the film, the main, major part, is my mother in a long monologue saying, ‘Whatever you boys do, please, don’t be assholes out there, just don’t be … assholes.’ It was perfect: just exactly what I was afraid of being. She’s totally serious, and we’re all making comments and poking her and she’s going, ‘Come on now, no stop, don’t be assholes.’ And all you can hear in the background is our insane laughter. Just as we got to the door, the camera batteries ran out.”