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Jeff Bridges
Actor

Jeff Bridges Biography

Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges born in December 4, 1949 is an American actor and musician. His most notable films include The Big Lebowski, King Kong, The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Tron, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Seabiscuit, K-PAX, The Fisher King, Fearless, The Contender, Iron Man, Tron: Legacy, True Grit and Crazy Heart, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Early life

Jeffrey Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson) and actor Lloyd Bridges. He has an older brother, actor Beau Bridges, and a younger sister, Lucinda. Another brother, Garrett, died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. Growing up, Bridges shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working. Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the late 1960s, and as a reservist in the early 1970s.

Film career

In his youth, Bridges, as well as his brother Beau, made occasional appearances on their father's show Sea Hunt (1958–1961) and the CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962–1963).

His first major role was in the 1971 movie The Last Picture Show for which he garnered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated again for the same award for his performance opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1974 film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In 1976, he starred as the protagonist Jack Prescott in the first remake of King Kong, opposite Jessica Lange. This film was a huge commercial success, earning back $90 million worldwide, more than triple its $23 million budget, and also winning an Academy Award for special effects.

One of his better known roles was in the 1982 science-fiction cult classic Tron, in which he played Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer (a role he reprised in late 2010 with the sequel Tron: Legacy). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1984 for playing the alien in Starman. He was also acclaimed for his roles in the thriller Against All Odds and the crime drama Jagged Edge. His role in Fearless is recognized by some critics to be one of his best performances. One critic dubbed it a masterpiece; Pauline Kael wrote that he "may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived". He also starred as "The Dude" in the Coen Brothers' cult-classic film The Big Lebowski.

In 2000, he received his fourth Academy Award nomination for his role in The Contender. He also starred in the 2005 Terry Gilliam movie Tideland, his second with the director (the first being 1991's The Fisher King). He shaved his trademark mane of hair to play the role of Obadiah Stane in the 2008 Marvel comic book adaptation Iron Man. In July 2008, at the San Diego Comic-Con International, he appeared in a teaser for TRON: Legacy, shot as concept footage for director Joseph Kosinski; this developed into a full 3D feature release in 2010.

In 2010, Bridges won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his role as Bad Blake in the film Crazy Heart. (Bridges is one of the oldest actors ever to win an Academy Award; he was also one of the youngest actors ever to be nominated. In 2010, he won his Oscar for Crazy Heart at the age of 60; in 1972, he was nominated for The Last Picture Show at age 22.)

He received his sixth Academy Award nomination for his role in True Grit, a collaboration with the Coen brothers in which he starred alongside Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld. Both the film, and Bridges' performance as Rooster Cogburn, were critically praised.

Other work

Bridges had been an amateur photographer since high school, and began taking photographs on movie sets during Starman, at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen. He has published many of these photographs online and in the 2003 Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges.

Bridges is also a cartoonist. Some of his "doodles" have appeared in films including K-PAX and The Door in the Floor. Bridges narrated the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2002), about the "unmaking" of a Terry Gilliam retelling of Don Quixote, tentatively titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which would have starred Johnny Depp as Sancho Panza and Jean Rochefort as the quixotic hero. Bridges also narrated the documentaries Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (2002, IMAX), Raising the Mammoth (2000, TV), and The Heroes of Rock and Roll (1979, TV). He also voiced the character Big Z in the animated picture Surf's Up.

Bridges has performed TV commercial voice-over work as well, including Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" advertisement campaign as well as the Duracell advertisements in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign.

On January 15, 2010 Bridges performed the song "I Don't Know" from Crazy Heart on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. In the film The Contender, in which he co-starred, Bridges recorded a version of Johnny Cash's standard "Ring of Fire" with Kim Carnes that played over the pivotal opening credits.

In February 2010, he was among the nearly 80 musicians to sing on the charity-single remake of We Are the World.

On December 18, 2010, Bridges hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live; he had hosted the show before in 1983 with his brother, Beau. With the December 18, 2010 episode, Bridges beat Sigourney Weaver's record for longest gap between hosting appearances on SNL (Weaver had a 24-year gap between her first time hosting in 1986 and her second time hosting in 2010, while Bridges had a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his most recent one, also in 2010).

Personal life

Bridges married Susan Geston in 1977. They met on the movie shoot of Rancho Deluxe, which was filmed on a ranch where Geston was working as a maid. They have three daughters: Isabelle (born in 1981), Jessica Lily (born in 1983), and Hayley Roselouise (born in 1985). Bridges is also a known cannabis user; in an interview, he admitted to giving up smoking marijuana during the filming of The Big Lebowski, but says he has not "permanently kicked the habit."

Bridges has studied Buddhism and has referred to himself as "A Buddhistly bent guy sounds kind of right. I haven’t taken the refuge vows... Just like I have so much resistance to this Buddhist stuff. I’m attracted, but I’m a human being, I’m attached to myself, and I kind of dig it. You know?"

Bridges meditates for half an hour before beginning work on a film set
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