As ‘The Old Man’ airs, Bridges well-prepared to handle stress
Actor Jeff Bridges has been nominated for an Oscar seven times and won once, but he has avoided television series like the plague. Bridges has surrendered at last, as he’s starring in the miniseries “The Old Man,” which premiered on FX Thursday.
He plays an ex-renegade CIA operative who has retired in obscurity until an assassin shows up to take him out. “I have a lot of resistance, man,” says Bridges of his reluctance to undertake the series challenge.
“Sometimes it’s a lot of fun, but I think the difficulty comes in the challenge to do justice to all the opportunities you’ve been given. And hopefully you can do that. And there’s lot of apprehension and anxiety about that,” he admits.
“I guess you get better,” he shrugs. “I watch a movie I’m in, it’s like I have red-light-greenlight. It says, ‘Yes, yes, no, no,’ like that. One interesting thing about (performing) it’s a communal art form like a huge magic trick. Everybody is involved. They can improve it and make you look better.
“One thing which is a sign to me, when I know it’s working, is when I get lost in a film myself. Usually when I see a film I was involved in, there is a home-movie aspect. I can remember what we had for lunch, all the other takes, the conversations, and everything. But when I get swept away into it myself, and it’s like I’m looking at some guy — not myself — that’s a good sign.”
But he still resists commitments. “Because I know what engagement costs. I got a lot of other stuff that I’d be doing too. I’ve got a family, all kinds of stuff. I resist everything. Resist, resist. And each assignment has a unique quality. This one was going to have a lot of physicality to it,” he says.
At 72, Bridges knew he had to prepare for the rough stuff. He just didn’t know how rough. Filming had barely begun when Bridges was diagnosed with lymphoma. After suffering through chemotherapy, he was stricken with COVID-19. “I went through about a year-and-ahalf of this bizarre dream and then came back,” he says, shaking his head.
“And what added to the dream effect was that there were all the people who I had just left a year-and-a-half-ago, and I said, ‘What happened? This is bizarre.’”
Recovered from COVID and his cancer in remission, Bridges says today, “I’m feeling terrific, and it’s great to be back with the gang.
“That year-and-a-half bout with my mortality — you know, in times like that, it seemed that all your philosophies and spirituality and everything that kind of comes to you, it tests you. So, all of that has been made more mature by that experience. I haven’t felt any different, really. I have always approached life the same way. But this kind of made things sharper; in a sharper image to me.”
Bridges was forced to resurrect his energy and determination for the role of the retired agent on the lam. He did that with a little help from his friends, he confesses.
One source was a physical regimen called Foundation Training, which is a series of bodyweight exercises related to gravity, and what Bridges describes as an “eight-point plank.” “This plank, it is calling upon yourself to be very stressed out in a very short period of time, and it is a fabulous thing,” he says.
“In life we try to avoid stress as much as we can, but life is stressful. So, it’s a good idea to practice stress, practice stressing yourself so you develop some skill in that, and the eight-point plank certainly does that for me.”
Another resource has been the philosophy of stoicism, which began in ancient Rome and stresses calm in the face of adversity and trust in strength of character. “I kind of bathed in that in preparation for our show,” he says.
“And I’m reading a book called ‘The Obstacle is the Way.’ And that has to do, again, with distress that comes at us. Rather than regret it, we can face it and practice being stressed and how are we going to figure that out?”
Though he’s made classics like “The Last Picture Show,” “Starman,” “Crazy Heart,” “The Big Lebowski,” Bridges says he’s never quite sure he’s nailed it. “Each person who witnesses your work has an opinion about it, and it varies even within myself,” he says.
“With myself there’ll be a performance — I’ll see it and not like it. The next day, I see it and like it. The observer is as much a part of the equation as what the observer is observing. You have to put him into the mix,” he thinks.
Technically speaking, this is really not Bridges’ first rodeo with TV series. His father, actor Lloyd Bridges, starred in the TV classic, “Sea Hunt,” which aired 155 episodes in syndication from 1958 to 1961.
“If you ever watched ‘Sea Hunt’ and saw an 8-year-old kid, that was probably me,” he grins.
“I am a product of nepotism. My dad set this whole thing in motion. And I remember being an 8-year-old kid, him sitting me on his bed and teaching me all the basics of acting. The big thing I learned from him was the joy in which he approached his work — or his play,” says Bridges.
“I got to work with him twice as an adult in ‘Tucker’ and ‘Blown Away.’ And it was so great to see him come on the set, and everybody was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of fun. We can relax and have fun and play.’
“The word that pops into my mind is joy. He approached his life and work with such joy, and it was kind of contagious. Even as a kid, I remember working with him when he came on set, he was so well loved by everyone, and this joy was contagious. And everybody rose up a little. I don’t know what it was about the guy. He was a one-of-a-kind of guy.”