The only director Jeff Bridges wrote to begging for a role: “I didn’t get it”
It’s probably been a long time since Jeff Bridges even had to audition for a role, with his legendary status ensuring that the Academy Award winner has scripts sent directly to his door begging him to sign on.
He’s been acting since he was a child, and once he fully committed to cinema as his vocation after choosing it over his first love of music, he was all-in. Bridges has been one of the industry’s most proven performers for over half a century, never giving a turn that’s anything less than watchable.
It’s brought him an Oscar win from seven nominations, a pair of Golden Globes, and a litany of memorable turns spanning from Michael Cimino’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot opposite Clint Eastwood to the title role in John Carpenter’s Starman via the daunting task of stepping into John Wayne’s shoes as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, and, of course, The Dude.
Bridges has been a household name since the 1970s, and he’s never been left struggling for work. That said, there was one part he was so desperate to play that he wrote to the director personally requesting that he be given the opportunity to play it. Unfortunately, his pleas fell on deaf ears. Maybe he wasn’t right for it, or perhaps there was an element of bias and favouritism in play, looking at who got the nod.
“The only director I ever wrote to, asking to be in their movie, was Martin Scorsese,” he told The List. “I wanted to play Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ. I loved that book; Nikos Kazantzakis is a great favourite of mine. But I didn’t get it.”
Scorsese’s most controversial picture was a passion project that he’d wanted to make for years, and when the time came to casting, Bridges’ appreciation for the material compelled him to reach out and throw his hat into the ring. Apparently, the legendary director couldn’t have cared less because he went ahead and hired one of his frequent collaborators and closest friends instead.
Harvey Keitel got the nod to play Judas Iscariot opposite Willem Dafoe’s Jesus Christ, and while it can’t be said that he’s not effective in the part, it would have been interesting to see how Bridges played it. After all, he and Keitel are two completely different actors who approach their performances in vastly differing ways, which might be why Scorsese decided to stick with what he knew.
The filmmaker was more aware than almost anybody else of what Keitel could bring to the table, and he’d never worked with Bridges before. He still hasn’t, but the Oscar winner more than likely hasn’t gone out of his way to self-write more job applications when, the first time, he reaped absolutely no rewards.
