The actor who does the best Jeff Goldblum impression, according to Jeff Goldblum
There have been a few different versions of Jeff Goldblum over the years.
There was the sinewy, fairly pretentious scientist of The Fly. Then there was the laid-back, overly sexual maths lizard of Jurassic Park, all bare chest and philosophy. And more recently, you have the grey-haired, hugely flamboyant fur coat wearer that’s all over jazz records and the Wicked movies.
What’s great is that due to this ‘evolution of Jeff’, you have more to work with if you’d like to do an impersonation of him, and indeed his mannerisms and vocal expressions have become so pronounced that, really, most people could probably have a passable go at Goldblum just by kind of muttering “hmm” and “yes” intermittently.
And of course, many people, famous or otherwise, have done just that, leading Vanity Fair to put some examples in front of him for him to rate, an exercise which basically just descended into Goldblum doing impressions of people doing impressions of him, like some kind of actor/impersonation Inception.
Amongst clips from the likes of the admittedly very good Matt Friend and talk show host Conan O’Brien, Goldblum singles out The X Files legend David Duchovny as the best mimic, who did a much more considered version of Goldblum on SNL back in the late 1990s.
Responding to Duchovny’s waving hands and thoughtful pauses, Goldblum said, “I love David Duchovny, and that was very nice. I guess I do use my hands… Yes, talking with my hands, of course, he’s got my glasses, some kind of dark frame, which I still sport in one way or another.”
Adding, “And then, of course, um…. Not being able to come up with exactly, directly, succinctly what you want to say, but beating around the bush to try to find some thought, your mind is actively still, you know, chewing on something, and it’s less that you’ve got some rich, inner mental life but more that I hardly know what I’m talking about. Very good, very, very good. Surgical and insightful.”
Elsewhere, Goldblum was delighted by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston’s version of him, but he may have been somewhat biased, given that the pair worked together on Wes Anderson’s animation Isle of Dogs back in 2018.
That was also the case with another actor who had the temerity to do a Goldblum impression right to his face on the red carpet, as Tom Hiddleston gave a decent rendition full of twitching hands at the GQ Men of the Year awards in 2018, where, interestingly, Goldblum described the British star as “a tender lover”.
The duo know each other very well (although possibly not quite as well as Goldblum implied) after working together on two Marvel movies, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok and 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder, where Goldblum played ‘The Grandmaster’ to Hiddleston’s space-travelling Norse God Loki.
Goldblum is about to be seen again as one of cinema’s most famous characters, ‘The Wizard’ in Wicked: For Good, the sequel to last year’s smash Wicked starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
One interesting way that filming the adaptations of the Broadway musical affected Goldblum is that, apparently, he decided to stop eating meat because of it. With animal cruelty as a background theme of the movies, Goldblum had discussions with Erivo and the film’s director, Jon Chu and decided to pack in eating meat and chicken once the project had wrapped, saying: “We need the world to work for everybody on Earth and every creature, too.”
