The movie that made Jeff Goldblum feel like a child on LSD
These days, Jeff Goldblum has arguably never been more popular or culturally significant—a remarkable achievement for someone who is 72 years old.
In recent years, his roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the acclaimed Netflix series KAOS, and his return as Dr Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic World series have solidified his status as an A-lister once again. Additionally, his reputation as one of the internet’s most adored, fashionably eccentric figures, known for his unique charm and infectious humour, has only added to his appeal. Goldblum is always prepared with an offbeat and amusing remark during interviews, including the time he revealed that a blockbuster film made him feel like a child who’d taken LSD.
In 2016, Goldblum caught up with The Guardian to discuss his return to the Independence Day franchise, and he seemed to be ageing backwards. Described as someone with childlike energy and boundless enthusiasm – despite being 63 years old at the time – he was “a man of vocal flourishes and copious hand gestures, all ‘Dah-dah-de’ and ‘Do-de-dums.'”
Goldblum brought that very childlike energy to a discussion about the Independence Day sequel – subtitled Resurgence – which was his first experience working on a film being shot with 3D cameras. Goldblum revealed that he’d seen James Cameron’s Avatar in 2009, like the rest of the world, and had been blown away by the experience of watching the world of Pandora come to life in three dimensions.
“I saw Avatar, didn’t I?” exclaimed Goldblum. “I felt like a child on LSD. Wow-oh-wow-oh-wow. I could touch it! I liked that.”
In truth, if there’s any actor in Hollywood who seems like he doesn’t need psychedelic drugs to expand his mind, it’s the already expansive Goldblum. However, he did reveal a few years later that he really could equate the Avatar experience with taking LSD – because he experimented with mescaline and acid as a younger man.
In 2018, he told Pitchfork: “When I was 20 in 1971, I took mescaline three times. I had a grand time on that every time. I saw Fellini’s Satyricon with a group of people, and it was a double-bill with The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Oh, boy, I was into it.”
That same year, though, he tried LSD for the first time, and it blew mescaline out of the water. He revealed that it initially seemed like nothing was going to happen, but the longer he played bongos while listening to the Rolling Stones, he began to realise, “Everything was just now different. I was high, very high, pathetically high.”
In his older years, though, it’s only the memory of being high that Goldblum needs. He says he is strictly “as is” these days, with no extra substances required. It doesn’t mean that watching things like Avatar has him experiencing any less of a trip, though – he can still feel high as a kite. Ultimately, it made him incredibly excited to get to the Resurgence set because he wanted to find out what it’s like to make a 3D film. Unfortunately for the offbeat star, though, making a 3D film was very different from watching one.
A crestfallen Goldblum revealed that he constantly suggested things to director Roland Emmerich about using the technology best, but Emmerich had to steer him away from these revolutionary ideas. This is mostly because Goldblum’s ideas tended to boil down to, “Shouldn’t I throw something at the audience?” and Emmerich had to let him down with a gentle, “No, Jeff, not how it works.”
