Source: Daily News - "When an actor signs up to play a character named Bad, he knows he's going to have to bring something of his dark side to the table.
"I certainly have insecurities and fears. I think most artists do. So I brought that," says Jeff Bridges about his role as a down-and-out country-western singer in "Crazy Heart," which opened in limited release Wednesday. "And there were times in my life I used blues to numb my feelings a little bit, and I sort of magnified that aspect of the character."
Yet it's those aspects that Bridges says didn't match up with Bad that have helped shape his life.
Starting in the late 1950s when he appeared on TV's "Sea Hunt," which starred his dad, Lloyd Bridges, the actor has had a career that has yielded many memorable performances in what can only can be called a crazy array of movies. Two of his early roles brought Oscar nominations - "The Last Picture Show" (1971) and "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974). Then, he was in two of the oddest big-budget films of the era - "King Kong" (1976) and Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" (1981), widely considered one of the biggest box-office disasters of all time. In 1982 he starred in cult sci-fi film "Tron," before getting his third nomination as the gentle alien in "Starman" (1984). His fourth nod came in "The Contender" (2000).
Along the way, he's played villains - "Jagged Edge" (1985), "The Vanishing" (1993) and most recently "Iron Man" (2008) - and visionaries, "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (1988). But Bridges is often remembered for his offbeat, unpredictable characters - "The Last American Hero" (1973) and "Stay Hungry" (1976), "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989), "The Fisher King" (1991), "American Heart" (1992), "Fearless" (1993) and the iconic slacker The Dude in the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski" (1998).
Sitting in a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant recently, Bridges, 60, looks like a cross between The Dude and Bad Blake. Wearing a rather ordinary-looking brown zip-up jacket and jeans, the actor sports a slightly scruffy goatee and longish combed-back hair.
He's got an easygoing manner, and it's obvious Bridges is enjoying the attention "Crazy Heart" is getting.
The film is being distributed by Fox Searchlight, the company that released the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" last year.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association gave Bridges its best-actor award, and he already has Spirit Award and Golden Globe nominations.
"I can't think of another film I've had so much fun on," says Bridges, who along with co-star Robert Duvall is one of the producers on the film. "And then (director) Scott Cooper pasted it together so well, and now we've got Fox Searchlight. If we didn't have that part of the equation, we wouldn't get people to see it, and that would be a shame." Coninue reading here...