The Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges role Paul Newman turned down: “Who would believe it?”
It’s always a gamble for a filmmaker to write a role for a specific actor they haven’t worked with before, especially when that filmmaker only has one feature to their name and the person they’re writing for is Paul Newman, one of Hollywood’s most legendary leading men.
If you’re going to aim high, you may as well aim as high as possible, and few stars lived in the same stratosphere as Newman, with the likelihood of the legend agreeing to play the part already lessened because the offer was made at a time when he had one eye on retiring from the silver screen.
The Academy Award winner only made five movies in the 1990s, a far cry from the eight he’d appeared in during the 1980s, the 12 he made in the 1970s, and the 19 he performed in throughout the 1960s, so by the turn of the millennium, it was already clear that he was drastically slowing down his output.
Where the Money Is and Road to Perdition would be Newman’s only live-action features of the 2000s, with Pixar’s Cars drawing his silver-screen career to a close, although he did find the time to win a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy for his performance in the HBO miniseries, Empire Falls.
After making his directorial debut on 1999’s political potboiler, Deterrence, Rod Lurie stuck to what he knew and stayed in the same genre sandbox for his follow-up, The Contender. Joan Allen’s senator is handpicked to become the first female vice president when the current incumbent dies, opening the doors to subterfuge and dissent as people from both parties try to tear her down.
Jeff Bridges played a pivotal role as the president, Jackson Evans, earning himself an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, an achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that the famously laidback actor was stoned out of his mind for almost the entire shoot. He wasn’t the first choice, though, with Lurie admitting he had his sights set on one of the all-time greats.
“At the time, the character was 70, 75 years old and dying. It was a much different part,” he told The Oklahoman. “So then I said to myself, ‘OK, I’m gonna young it down by 25 or 30 years, and I need to find who is Paul Newman now? And that’s Jeff. And he’s a great guy, he’s charismatic, and he’s a fantastic personality.”
After Newman refused to board The Contender, the door opened for Bridges to deliver one of his finest performances, and the irony wasn’t lost on him that a polar opposite character was still in the zeitgeist. “I remember when Jeff and I went to my car together, he looked at me, he put his arm around me, and he said, ‘The Dude as president. Who would believe it?'” Lurie recalled. “And I told him, ‘They’re gonna believe it, Jeff. Don’t worry.'”
As far as replacements go, substituting one of the best actors of their generation for one of the best actors of the next generation is about as good a compromise as you’ll find, with Bridges knocking his tilt at the presidency out of the park.
