“I really need to audition, I guess”: The domino effect that launched Jeff Goldblum’s career
Jeff Goldblum’s charismatic, idiosyncratic persona has delighted moviegoers for years, but its origins are just as unusual as the man himself.
Goldblum has a rare quality among actors, where it never feels like anyone else could have played his roles; that’s not to say that every project he has been in has been a complete success, as he’s had just as many misfires as any other actor who’s been working for over half a century.
However, his specific mannerisms and unique outlook on life often feel just as colourful in real life as he does on the movie screen, so it should come as no surprise that someone of Goldblum’s expressiveness had his beginnings on the stage, as that type of heightened acting is what he has always excelled at.
It was shortly after his professional beginning that Goldblum appeared at the Delacorte Theatre, home of Shakespeare in the Park productions, for the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was adapted by Hair’s playwright John Guare, and with the opportunity to co-star alongside Raúl Juliá, he said he had doors opened to him that had previously been shut.
“I entered halfway into rehearsals, and it became a super hit that summer, then went to Broadway for a year,” Goldblum said, “I was in the chorus doing eight shows a week and understudied one of the bigger parts. After that, I went back and finished the second year at the Neighbourhood Playhouse and then thought, ‘Well, now I really need to audition, I guess’. The first one I went for was El Grande de Coca-Cola, and I got it.”
El Grande de Coca-Cola was the first Broadway production to be recorded and aired on HBO, which made Goldblum far more well-known than a standard show would have done for him; plus, it not only attracted the attention of other stage directors but also filmmakers who took note of his presence, which seemed perfectly suited for the big screen. He was lucky enough to catch the attention of the legendary, Oscar-nominated director Robert Altman, who cast him in two of his best films.
Although he didn’t have too much screentime when he worked with Altman on Nashville and California Split, appearing in two of the best films of the 1970s was certainly never going to hurt his career, lending him enough exposure for his agent to get him a job on Michael Winner’s controversial revenge thriller Death Wish, in which he played a violent street thug. “The first movie audition I’d ever had,” Goldblum said, “I got it. One thing has led to another, and I have not stopped working since”.
The longevity of his career is admirable because he’s never been an actor obsessed with dominating the screen, and although he’s rarely ever cast in a lead role, he’s known for being able to become a scene-stealer, even when given minimal screentime, the best example of this being his performance as Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park.
While the character in Michael Crichton’s novel is killed off, Goldblum was so undeniable that the film changed the source material so that he would live and become the central protagonist in the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. That’s not something that a young actor like him ever would have expected when he was at Shakespeare in the Park for the first time.
