How Jeff Bridges became this year's 'Dude'
By: Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
Issue date: 3/8/10 Section: Entertainment
When Jeff Bridges, as just about every handicapper expects, gets up tonight to receive his Academy Award for Best Actor, we all know that the award will be given - and received, and deserved - on two levels at once. It will be a tasty double scoop of victory. Bridges' performance in Crazy Heart is superb by any standard: a note-perfect piece of transformative acting, and also, like the film itself (or, at least, the best parts of it), a beautiful throwback to the lived-in, shaggy-psychodrama spirit of the let-it-all-hang-out '70s. His Bad Blake is that memorable contradiction, an intensely sympathetic man who gets dragged down by demons of his own devising. Letting yourself identify with a character this flawed is a cathartic experience, an essential part of what movies are all about.
The other level of triumph that Bridges will be getting honored for, of course, is his entire career: all the sturdy, soulful performances that he has given over 40 years, ever since he broke through in The Last Picture Show (1971). I always have to do a mental double take when I think of how long Bridges has been around, because even now, at 60, with a twinge of gravel in his voice, he still has the mellowness and robust handsome grace of an aging Beach Boy. What audiences liked about him way back when is what they still like about him now: his ability to give decent men ripples of furtive, troubled urgency.
When an actor or actress takes home an Oscar that is also given, in part, for what they've done in the past, it works one of two ways. Either they're getting, in effect, a kind of overall career-achievement award; or they're winning the Oscar in belated acknowledgement of one or two especially beloved and acclaimed performances that the Academy, in its infinite wisdom, somehow passed over. Examples of the former include Henry Fonda, whose Best Actor Oscar for On Golden Pond (1982) was a classic lifetime-achievement nod, or Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992), or even Sandra Bullock this year. If and when she wins for The Blind Side, surely it will be, as much as anything, a tip of the hat to the Bullock brand, and what that brand has meant to Hollywood over the past 15 years. Examples of the latter include Denzel Washington in Training Day (a belated nod for his work in Malcolm X and Hurricane), or Kate Winslet in The Reader (those who aren't snobs know that it should have gone to her for Titanic).
The other level of triumph that Bridges will be getting honored for, of course, is his entire career: all the sturdy, soulful performances that he has given over 40 years, ever since he broke through in The Last Picture Show (1971). I always have to do a mental double take when I think of how long Bridges has been around, because even now, at 60, with a twinge of gravel in his voice, he still has the mellowness and robust handsome grace of an aging Beach Boy. What audiences liked about him way back when is what they still like about him now: his ability to give decent men ripples of furtive, troubled urgency.
When an actor or actress takes home an Oscar that is also given, in part, for what they've done in the past, it works one of two ways. Either they're getting, in effect, a kind of overall career-achievement award; or they're winning the Oscar in belated acknowledgement of one or two especially beloved and acclaimed performances that the Academy, in its infinite wisdom, somehow passed over. Examples of the former include Henry Fonda, whose Best Actor Oscar for On Golden Pond (1982) was a classic lifetime-achievement nod, or Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992), or even Sandra Bullock this year. If and when she wins for The Blind Side, surely it will be, as much as anything, a tip of the hat to the Bullock brand, and what that brand has meant to Hollywood over the past 15 years. Examples of the latter include Denzel Washington in Training Day (a belated nod for his work in Malcolm X and Hurricane), or Kate Winslet in The Reader (those who aren't snobs know that it should have gone to her for Titanic).
Be the first to comment on this story