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SON of the
late actor Lloyd and kid brother of Beau, Jeff Bridges
got his start in the entertainment business at a
precociously young age: he was four months old
when he made his debut film appearance in 1950's The
Company She Keeps. He swam onto TV screens at 8, in
his father's Sea Hunt series, and made occasional
appearances alongside his brother on dad's
early-'60s variety program, The Lloyd Bridges
Show. At 22, he won a Best Supporting Actor
nomination for his engaging breakthrough role as a Texas
roughneck in Peter Bogdanovich's 1971
coming-of-age drama The Last Picture
Show; three years later, he was again singled out by
the Academy, for his performance in Michael Cimino's
1974 caper flick Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
Bridges' involvement in a series of quality projects
into the mid-'70s Fat City, Bad Company,
The Iceman Cometh, The Last American Hero,
and Hearts of the West kept him basking in the
spotlight. But a spate of ill-conceived films thereafter
somewhat tarnished his leading-man patina: the
execrable 1976 King Kong remake and Cimino's
cinematic disaster of historic proportions, Heaven's
Gate, were just the two most obvious missteps.
Bridges, who had flirted with pot, LSD, est,
transcendental meditation, Cybill Shepherd, Candy Clark,
and Valerie Perrine, finally settled down at 28 with
photographer Susan Geston, whom he met on the set of
Rancho Deluxe in 1975. They have three daughters.
Bridges blasted out of his career lull with the
back-to-back 1984 releases of two highly
successful films: the love-triangle suspenser
Against All Odds, which paired him in
life-threatening romance with Rachel Ward, hit with
audiences; and John Carpenter's Starman, in which
he played an Earthbound alien who assumes the form of a
recently deceased human to evade capture, garnered him
another Oscar nomination. Under full steam, Bridges
powered through one of his biggest (and only)
box-office smashes, the courtroom drama Jagged
Edge (1985), which he followed up with the
unsatisfying detective thriller 8 Million Ways to
Die (1986) and the murder mystery The Morning
After (1986). One of the best showcases for his
naturalistic talent of his career, Francis
Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream
(1988), positioned Bridges as a visionary car
manufacturer beleaguered by corrupt politicians and the
machinations of the Big Three automakers.
Now considered one of the most talented but least
rewarded movie stars (Janet Maslin of The New York
Times has pronounced him "the most underappreciated
great actor of his generation"), Bridges' performances
in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), the Terry
Gilliam fantasy The Fisher King (1991),
Fearless (1993), and the well-received indie
film American Heart (1993; his producing debut)
were loved by critics but snubbed by the Academy. In
1996, he donned dapper academic tweed to play Barbra
Streisand's reluctant lover in the treacly romance
The Mirror Has Two Faces. The year 1998 witnessed
the release of the Coen brothers' inspired farce The
Big Lebowski, in which Bridges charmed as a hirsute
aging hipster who gets mistaken for a millionaire with
some serious debts. On the darker side, he played a
college professor who suspects his neighbors of
singularly unpatriotic activities in the creepy summer
1999 conspiracy thriller Arlington Road. He
rounded out the year with roles in the Albert Brooks
comedy The Muse and the filmization of the Sam
Shepard play Simpatico.
The year 2000 marked an intriguing career move, as
the triple Oscar nominee released a moderately
well-received debut pop album, Be Here Soon, on
the Ramp label, which he co-founded with former Doobie
Brother Michael McDonald.
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Jeff Bridges 
