The role Jeff Bridges wasn’t allowed to turn down: “I thought I was done with that”
Jeff Bridges is one of Hollywood’s most indecisive workaholics. This inherent contradiction is something Bridges attributed to himself long ago, although it’s unclear how much truth there is to it. Whatever the case, Bridges will often claim he has always had that push and pull between his career and his desire to do other things. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he wanted acting to be his profession at one point, and he even tried to turn down one of his defining roles. Thankfully, though, one of his close colleagues wasn’t going to allow such nonsense.
When Bridges sat down with The Telegraph in 2013, he was three years removed from winning a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for Crazy Heart, making a sequel to one of his most beloved films (Tron: Legacy), and reuniting with the Coen brothers for True Grit. When asked what it was like to walk on stage at the Academy Awards to receive the biggest prize in the game, he replied, “Ah, that was great. I couldn’t believe it. Pretty surreal. And man, I didn’t know what I was going to say or anything like that. It was just a stream of consciousness.”
In truth, this answer is very representative of Bridges as a person and as an actor. He is so good-natured and laid back that it seems almost impossible to believe he applies any forethought to his career. Instead, it’s easy to imagine that he just wings it, and if things turn out well, then all the better. Perhaps his most popular and enduring role has attached this perception to Bridges – after all, The Dude abides, but he does not plan.
Bridges smiled: “Yeah, I’ve got some of that in me; quite a bit of Dude in me. I consider myself pretty lazy, but I look back and check out the stuff I’ve done, and I say, ‘God, that’s a lot of stuff for a lazy guy.’ It’s a paradox, I suppose, being both things.”
Indeed, Bridges doesn’t sound like he’s blowing smoke when he thinks of himself as lazy despite all the evidence. He’s always been strangely ambivalent toward acting, even back in the 1970s when he was starting out. He mused: “Sometimes, it transcends all your highest expectations, and you’re like, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ And other times, you think, ‘Oh, this is going to be a good one,’ and then it’s just not quite right. Every once in a while, I realise why I’m into it, and it’s pretty joyous.”
This uncertainty toward his chosen profession is perhaps why Bridges often struggles to commit to one movie or another. He believes he has issues with making choices and finds himself spending too long weighing up the pros and cons of any particular gig. This then renders him extremely slow when choosing one path or another. Indeed, he has been like this for so long that his mother used to tell him he suffered from “abulia”, which is defined as a lack of will, initiative, or motivation.
Amusingly, one of Bridges worst brushes with “abulia” came in 1973 when he’d just finished shooting The Last American Hero, a biopic of Nascar driver Junior Johnson. He was offered a role in John Frankenheimer’s The Iceman Cometh, a movie adaptation of the seminal Broadway play by Eugene O’Neill. However, he was so exhausted from Last American Hero that he told his agent, “Oh no, I’m bushed. Tell ’em, ‘Thanks, but I’m going to pass on that.'” His agent was shocked, but Bridges held firm and admitted, “I thought I was done with that.”
To his surprise, though, Bridges soon found himself on the phone with his Last American Hero director, Lamont Johnson, and he wasn’t happy at all. Bridges claimed Johnson sternly stated, “I heard you turned this down,” to which he responded, “Oh, I’m just bushed, Monty.” The furious director shot back, “Bushed? You’re an ass!” and promptly hung up on Bridges.
A shellshocked Bridges put the phone down and ruminated on the implications of Johnson’s rant. He clearly thought the project was an excellent opportunity, and he’d be stupid to turn it down, but Bridges wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a full-time actor at that point. Still, he reasoned that if one of his colleagues could get that passionate about it, maybe he owed it to himself to commit more fully.
While remembering the project, Bridges concluded, “Well, this is kind of an interesting crossroads here. I’m wondering if I should make it a profession or not. So, I decided to do a little experiment and just throw myself into the situation. So I did, and I just had the most incredible time.”
