Jeff Goldblum names his favourite childhood movies
Where would we be without Jeff Goldblum? Over the course of his dizzying career, he has starred in some of the most beloved films of all time, including Steven Speilberg’s Jurassic Park, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic, David Cronenberg’s The Fly and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok. Here, the acclaimed actor and musician names some of the films from his childhood that had a lasting impact.
Jeff Goldblum was born in West Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1952. As a child of that generation, he grew up amid a new technicolour age. Indeed, the year he was born saw the release of films such as The Greatest Show On Earth (which made a lasting impression on a young Steven Speilberg) Singin’ In The Rain, and the classic western High Noon. Movies were a big deal for Goldblum, and this selection demonstrates how regularly his family went to their local theatre.
As Goldblum explained during a conversation with EW: “I’ve been thinking about [this list] for the last two weeks. I’ve gone on a tremendous nostalgic adventure, and my sister has helped me because we used to go see movies together, my younger sister Pam. Our parents used to drop us off at the Leona Theater. Every couple of weeks, it would carry a new movie. It was a grand movie palace, and we would see some first-run movies.”
He went on to note: “I’m quite elderly, so these might be from an era you don’t know, and some of these may be fringe offerings. But some of you might be interested to hear what they are. Some of them are the movies Pam and I saw, and some of them are movies the whole family went to together.” Having organised his list in alphabetical order, Goldblum began by discussing the 1961 picture The Absent-Minded Professor, in which “MacMurray played the professor who, you know, blew his laboratory up and discovered flubber, which allowed his car to fly. It made a big impression on me. Also, Around the World in 80 Days, The Apartment and After The Fox.“
Another notable entry on Goldblum’s list is Diary of A Madman, starring Vincent Price, who appeared in another film that made a lasting impression on Goldblum: The Fly. “Vincent Price made a big impression on me and my sister,” he said. “Ooh he was scary.” Goldblum would, of course, later become associated with the remake of the science-fiction horror. He plays the brilliant scientist Seth Brundle, who invents a machine that can teleport inanimate objects. After one of his experiments with the “telepods” goes wrong, Brundle finds himself gradually transforming into a grotesque fly-human hybrid. Cronenberg’s adaptation of the original 1958 film won enormous critical acclaim and won Goldblum significant attention.
You can check out his full selection below.
Jeff Goldblum’s favourite childhood movies:
- The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson, 1961)
- Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1968)
- The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
- After The Fox (Vittorio De Sica, 1966)
- The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968)
- Bridge Over The River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
- The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
- Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1960)
- Come Fly With Me (William Wyler, 1963)
- Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963)
- Diary Of A Madman (Reginald Le Borg, 1963)
- Elvira Madigan (Bo Widerberg, 1967)
- Father Goose (Ralph Nelson, 1964)
- Funny Girl (William Wyler, Herbert Ross, 1968)
- The Fly (Kurt Neumann, 1958)
- The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1968)
- Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967)
- Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963)
- The Incredible Mr Limpet (Arthur Lubin, 1964)
- I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (Herbert L. Strock, 1957)
- Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
- King Kong vs Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1962)
- The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
- My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1965)
- The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
- The Odd Couple (Gene Saks, 1968)
- On The Double (Melville Shavelson, 1961)
- The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963)
- Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
- The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)
- The Rat Race (Garson Kanin, 1960)
- The Sterile Cuckoo (Alan J. Pakula, 1969)
- Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
- Splendour In The Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961)
- Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964)
- The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960)
- Under The Yum Yum Tree (David Swift, (1963)
- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1968)
- Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980)
