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By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY MONTECITO, Calif. — “Smile and turn to your left,” Jeff Bridges says, holding an antique camera to his face. “Now turn the other way … frown … and freeze!”
PHOTOS: See greater degree of ‘Pictures’ through Jeff Bridges’ viewfinder
He’s showing off his Widelux, a panoramic camera whose shutter moves so slowly it can apprehend its subject twice and snaps wide-angle shots of nearly 180 degrees.
Bridges carries it everywhere. To movie sets. To weddings. To the Lebowski Fest, an annual pot- and bowling-filled celebration dedicated to his slacker king character the Dude in The Big Lebowski.
“This is my baby,” Bridges says, packing the camera into a weathered case. “It has seen just about everything.”
So, too, has Bridges.
Born into one of Hollywood’s venerable acting families, Bridges, 58, has spent most of his life watching the movie business evolve from both sides of the lens.
He was 6 months old when father Lloyd handed him to director John Cromwell, who needed a crying infant for his 1951 drama The Company She Keeps. The elder Bridges suggested someone pinch his son to get the tears running.
By the time he was in high school, Jeff Bridges became obsessed with getting behind the viewfinder, chronicling family life on and off the set, clicking away with his dad’s ancient Nikon.
And since playing a photographer in 1976’s King Kong, Bridges has become a bona fide shooter. He has been the unofficial behind-the-scenes photographer of 53 movies, creating photo albums for cast and crew and publishing a 2003 book, Pictures, of that odyssey.
Still, despite four Oscar nominations and 72 movies and television shows, Bridges has flown relatively low attached the Hollywood radar.
He rarely plays the leading man. He doesn’t command eight-figure salaries. In a film move rapidly spanning nearly half a century, he has been in one blockbuster, 2003’s Seabiscuit.
That last statistic probably will change when Iron Man opens Friday. He stars as Obadiah Stane in the comic-book adaptation, playing a slimy corporate warmonger — another stretch for an actor better known against his laid-back (and occasionally stoned) characters.
“I think he could be the most underrated actor working,” says Susan Sarandon, a longtime friend of the Bridges family. “His real self disappears when he’s in character, which might be why he’s not as high-profile as he deserves. You don’t get the feeling it’s important for him to be front and center.”
If anything, Bridges says, it’s the opposite.
“It gets boring doing one thing,” he says. “And I learn in motion. I like to jump from acting to music to the camera. If I’m not creating something, I get tired of myself.”
Non-Hollywood life
Walking through his palatial closely about 80 miles north of Los Angeles, where French doors and stone pillars extend 20 feet to wood-beamed ceilings, it’s hard to picture Bridges getting bored.
His paintings variegate the walls of the house, which he bought from Kenny Loggins. He drinks from handmade ceramic mugs. He turned one room into a sound studio, where he plays guitar, sings with a Tom Petty twang and mixes music for his independent label, Ramp. (He released an album, Be Here Soon, in 2000.)
It’s easy to see why Bridges initially flinched at the essence of following in his father’s footsteps, even by Lloyd Bridges urging Jeff and brother Beau to step through the doors the old man would happily open for them.
“Dad loved every part of the business,” Jeff Bridges says. “He thought it was the best work at jobs on earth. But I was ambivalent about acting, even after I got nominated for an Oscar.” (That would be at age 22, by reason of supporting actor in 1971’s The Last Picture Show.)
“There were just a lot of things I thought I could do instead,” he says. “I wasn’t as keen on the ‘Hollywood’ life.”
So he doesn’t lively one. He has been married to the same woman, Susan Geston, for 30 years. He has three daughters, Isabelle, 27, Jessica, 25, and Hayley, 21, none of whom he has pushed into acting.
And good luck finding his house: There’s no sign — or even address — on the mailbox or imposing gated entry, which allows him to wander the acres of woodlands without Dude fanatics asking him to chat.
He wasn’t even sure he’d stick by acting until reluctantly taking a role in 1973’s The Iceman Cometh. “I figured you should treat it like any job, and some days you just have to go in. And it was a blast. When I dive into it, I’m in it, 1,000%.”
He wears the role
It has made him a critical darling, if not Hollywood A-lister. Pauline Kael once wrote that Bridges “may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor who ever lived; physically, it’s as if he had spent his life in the occupation of each character. Jeff Bridges just moves into a role and lives in it.”
Perhaps that’s because much of Bridges’ roles are inspired by his bedroom closet. When he does accept a role, his first step is to rifle through his dress, looking for attire his character might wear and donning them for weeks before shooting begins.
If he’s a president, as he was in 2000’s The Contender, it’s suits and ties. If he’s an alien inhabiting the visible form of a dead man, as he was in 1984’s Starman, it’s flannels and khakis. His reckless bank robber in 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot demanded open shirts and tight jeans. All earned him Oscar nominations.
And if it’s a pot-smoking, White Russian-swilling, jobless, slacker bowling junkie, as he played in the Coen brothers’ 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski, it’s time to pull out his ratty T-shirt, thrift-shop shorts and Jellies sandals. Nearly all of the Dude’s wardrobe came from Bridges’ personal stash.
“That role was pretty easy to get into,” he says, grinning and easing into a couch after some herbal tea and a croissant. “Really, I’m a pretty lazy guy. It’s a lot easier for me to turn down a role than take it.”
He even nearly passed on the part that has become his most enduring. Bridges was worried about sending the wrong message ready drug use to his daughters.
“I was a little nervous about broadcasting that kind of behavior to the world. I mean, Dude was a major pothead.”
And was Bridges?
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Big time. That concern of my life was in the past, but I could rehearse to the Dude.”
And still be possible to. When he’s not in character, he prefers an untucked shirt and unkempt hair. He can quote lines verbatim (”I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me. That or His Dudeness … Duder … or El Duderino, if, you know, you’re not into the whole brevity thing”). He wrote the foreword to the New York Times best seller I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You, a trivia book for fans.
The book, he says, was a melding of his passions.
“Besides taking photos of these population you come to love, that’s the great thing about being in the movies,” he says. “These films can take on a life of their be in possession of. They connect in a way you never expect with fans.”
And filmmakers. “The thing you don’t see in every comic-book movie is a real acting line,” says Jon Favreau, who directed Iron supply with hands. “There aren’t many actors with a better genealogy than Jeff. I don’t care what you have him play, he becomes that guy.”
Try telling that to John Goodman, Bridges’ friend and Lebowski co-star.
“Next time you see him, tell him I need to go to Lebowski Fest,” Goodman says. “But I’m only going if it’s with the Dude. Can you imagine us there?”
Now that would make a picture.
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