Jeff Bridges – Right Place, Right Time

Thanks to Alejo for forwarding the Apple trailer link to Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.¬† I hate to jump on the bandwagon and I’m certainly not going to start in with who was first in calling this — seriously, Kris Tapley is the first person who told me but I know that Anne Thompson and Steve Pond were right there at the same time saying the same thing — all of this to say that, yeah, The Dude may finally see his moment to shine. Let’s take a look back at Jeff Bridges’ brilliant career. Full Disclosure, I’m one of the more devoted followers of The Big Lebowski so I tend to think of Jeff Bridges as family, if not my doppleganger in male form — on screen anyway, as THAT character.

Jeff Bridges has never gotten a fair shake, Oscar-wise. He is always right on the edge but never seemed to have the right stuff at the right moment. And there has always seemed a tiny bit of prejudice where he was concerned. What caused it? Who knows. Maybe the nepotism thing, maybe that he’s also done big blockbuster films like Against All Odds (one of my all-time favorite Bridges performances, though he can kind of do no wrong in my eyes). So here goes:

He became a big deal when he starred in The Last Picture Show. For more on this movie, please get your hands on a copy of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. His first Oscar nomination – he lost to Ben Johnson from the same film. No one is going to argue there.

So then King Kong, yeah, and Winter Kills, Tron, Against All Odds… Here is where things start to get interesting. He makes Starman and suddenly people are starting to take him a lot more seriously as an actor. Third Oscar nomination (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot for supporting). He was great in Starman but lost to F. Murray Abraham for Amadeus. Again, no one is going to complain. Believe it or not, though, Jeff Bridges did not get an Oscar nomination again until The Contender.

He didn’t get one for Tucker, not for The Fisher King, not for Fearless (!), certainly not for The Big Lebowski (he was robbed), and not for the The Fabulous Baker Boys. Since then, Bridges hasn’t really had much of a shot for serious Oscar consideration until now. And he’s number one with a bullet.

Bridges goes up against Daniel Day Lewis for Nine, Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker, Matt Damon for The Informant, George Clooney for Up in the Air, Viggo Mortensen for The Road, and of course, Colin Firth for A Single Man – to say nothing of Michael Stuhlbarg for A Serious Man. And Morgan Freeman for Invictus, etc. So many men, so little nomination slots.