Jeff Bridge wants to hang out with President Donald Trump.
The Hollywood actor and musician wants the opportunity so that he can ‘build bridges’ with the US president as he stars in a new advertising campaign built (literally) around his name.
Bridges on Bridges focuses on building connections between people and so we decided to ask who the most important connections in his life are for the many different aspects of his career, from his Oscar winning acting performances, to his musical career and activism.
What relationship do you think has had the most influence in your acting?
Hmm… Well gotta go with my dad man, Lloyd Bridges and my brother Beau, they were my two acting teachers and my mum doesn’t get much public credit but she’s you know right in there too. She’s probably the best actor of the whole bunch and there’s a fella right over here…
Whip pan! Whip! Whip pan!
Bridges points to the cameraman and gestures for him to turn to point to his manager watching over the interview.
See that guy over there? That’s my manager, man. That’s David Schiff, he’s the guy who holds it all together and says: “Hey what about this?” You know? and I can say “Hey, I thought about this, can we get that going?” He goes yeah… so that’s very important relationship.
I’ve got my makeup man Thomas Nellen who just won the Swiss Film Award for best makeup last year he’s been with me for several, films he’s with me on this, and it’s great to have a guy who, you know, you don’t have to you know bring up to speed. He’s already there we know each other. We get to pick up where we left off and then speaking of that… I gotta mention my stand-in Lloyd Catlett. We’ve been friends for 50 years man he’s been my stand-in for over 70 films So he’s a string through the whole thing.
And who would you say has most influenced your music?
Yeah I gotta mention T Bone Burnett, he’s an amazing producer I don’t know if you know his stuff? Well, we met on Heaven’s Gate and man… he’s really responsible for Crazy Heart, all that music in there. He’s been my dear friend, he’s produced albums of mine and we remain very tight, very very close.
I only just watched Crazy Heart recently, really liked it.
Yeah, it’s a good movie huh? That’s Scott Cooper, wonderful director. That was his first movie that he ever directed and he wrote it too. Yeah, I was really pleased with that, that was like a dream coming true you know.
So what was like the back and forth for making the music for Crazy Heart, I understood that you were heavily involved in creating all the tracks?
Well another friend that comes to mind is John Goodwin. He wrote kind of the opening song for Crazy Heart, Hold on. It’s kind of a theme to it and we go back to the fourth grade! We write music together all the time and he wrote that too. John Goodwin, he’s a wonderful songwriter.
And more recently I’ve noticed your career has featured more activism, environmental activism. Is there a specific person that put you more onto that path?
Yeah, well my father, Lloyd Bridges, he did that a series long before you were born called Sea Hunt. I don’t know if you heard about it? This is the 1950s into the ’60s and he got very involved with the sea and the ocean and so ever since I was a kid he was very much involved with the health of the sea and the planet…
And maybe about maybe three years ago this woman Susan Kucera came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a documentary about climate change. I said, “well yeah I’m concerned about that and I would like to participate,’” but I wanted to bring something new to the party. I don’t want to just, you know, give the bad news and point fingers. Let’s come up with something different you know? She said, “yeah me too” and so we talked about it and the subject that started to interest us was – why are we behaving the way we’re behaving? So we thought yeah let’s look at the long view of where we’re headed and that long view is also looking back to see our history, what kind of animals we are, why we are responding.
We started to assemble a great number of scientists and philosophers who all give their opinions and I learned a lot doing the film. It’s called Living in the Future’s Past, which is a metaphor for where we are right now, in the future’s past, and what we do now is going to certainly affect the future.
It was her ideology that drove that then?
Yeah, yeah she is a wonderful cinematographer, shot all this great footage, and I’m very proud of the film I think it’s it does bring something new to the to the discussion.
The advert you’re featuring in is ‘Building Bridges’, building connections with people and I was wondering if there’s one person that you would like to kind of form a connection with? Someone you may have admired or…
Ohhhh…. Yeah I guess… You know who came to mind is our President Trump. I’d like to, you know, hang out with him and really trying to figure out what his thinking is you know? I’m curious. So interesting to hang with different people, people who have different points of view.
