When Jeff Bridges’ stunt man got a little too committed to a role: “Jeff felt bad”
Stunt doubles are the unsung heroes of Hollywood. Since the dawn of cinema, these men and women have been putting their bodies on the line in the name of entertainment. Without them, movies would not only be extremely tame, but these days, they would also be even more corrupted by annoying CGI action sequences. When you see a star do a backflip off a building, engage in death-defying martial arts, or ram through a storefront in a stolen car, you’re most likely looking at a stunt double, not a celebrity.
One of the most intriguing facts about stunt doubles is that they often work with the same star for decades. If they have a similar build and vaguely similar facial features, they are much easier to pass off as the star and will travel with them from film to film. Many actors become close friends with their stunt doubles, with Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham being the most prominent example. They worked together for decades and even inspired the relationship between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt’s characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Jeff Bridges has also enjoyed a long and successful collaboration with his stunt double. Loyd Catlett met Bridges in 1970 on the set of The Last Picture Show. Catlett was a young rodeo cowboy still in high school who had no aspirations to be a movie star, but he caught the movie bug and moved to Hollywood. When work dried up, Bridges offered to hire him as his body double.
For the most part, the profession requires self-subordination. A body double is, by definition, there to stand in for a star, but never to call attention to themselves. They have to imitate the star’s look down to the very last stitch on their costume and mirror their physical mannerisms. This is just part of the gig. In one instance, however, Catlett accidentally flipped the script on the whole thing and inadvertently dictated how Bridges played one of his most recognisable characters.
In 2008’s Iron Man, the Big Lebowski star played Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark’s mentor-turned-nemesis. It was the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and according to Bridges, nobody knew what they were doing. There were extensive rewrites and a lot of indecision, and it turned out that some of that indecision trickled down to the makeup and wardrobe departments. Right before the film started shooting, Bridges sent Catlett a photo of himself in character with a bald head and beard.
“I’d never been bald before, but right away, I had my hair shaved off, took a picture, and sent it to Jeff,” the stunt man recalled. “He calls right up and says, ‘Shit, Loyd! That was a bald cap. We were just experimenting with looks. I was just joking with you.’”
Instead of making Catlett wear a wig to match him, Bridges wordlessly apologised for the misunderstanding by shaving his own head and incorporating it into his character. If you’ve ever wondered why the actor is bald for that role, it isn’t because he was trying to imitate a Bond villain; it’s because Catlett accidentally made the decision for him.
