Jeff Bridges

Bridges's 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. Another early role was the 1982 movie Tron, in which he played Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1984 for playing the alien in Starman. He gained repute in the mid-80s for his roles in the sexy thriller Against All Odds and the crime drama Jagged Edge. He also took the leading role of "The Dude" in the Coen brothers' film The Big Lebowski. His role in Fearless is recognized by some critics to be one of his best performances, not to mention perhaps one of the most underrated films of the 1990s. 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'.

Bridges is also a first rate character actor in films like The Vanishing as a psychopathic college professor, a standoffish U.S. president in 2000's The Contender (produced by co-star Gary Oldman and producer Douglas Urbanski and for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor again) and The Muse as a carefree screenwriter buddy of Albert Brooks. Bridges narrated the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2002), a singularly unique filmographic witness of 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 has worked with Gilliam on The Fisher King and Tideland. 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).

In his off time while on set, he has been known to document the filmmaking process by photographing fellow actors and on-set staff with a panoramic camera. He began doing this during the filming of Starman at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen. He has published many of these photographs online and in print titled "Pictures" (Hardcover, 2003, ISBN 1-57687-177-0; Library of Congress control number: 2003046711,,,)

Bridges is also a cartoonist. Some of his "doodles" have appeared in various films, such as K-PAX and The Door in the Floor (a short story-within-story by John Irving). He incorporates his drawings at his web site, notable because it is almost completely hand-written and drawn art-not typed. He also plays guitar.

Bridges is known for his liberal political views. He married Susan Geston on June 5, 1977 after meeting her on the set of Rancho Deluxe in 1975, filmed on a dude ranch where Geston worked as a maid. The couple has 3 daughters, Isabelle (b. 1981), Jessica (b. 1983), and Hayley (b. 1987).

Filmography

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