With a crucial Game 4 on tap tonight taking place in Los Angeles, it’s only appropriate that it become time for some real star power and true Hollywood royalty. And it is with that the legendary Jeff Bridges is presented.
Born into the acting world of star parents Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges along with his older brother Beau, Jeff would see his first roles on screen as an infant in The Company She Keeps, and then appearing as a series regular from 8 to 10 on his father’s show Sea Hunt. Jeff would not ride on the family coat tails for long however, earning two Academy Award nominations before the age of 25 while still a fresh faced youngster. But that fresh face grew ever more grizzled as time wore on and the nominations still piled up with other memorable roles along the way, notably the Van Dyke donning Dude (or Duder or his Dudness, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) in The Big Lebowski, before going full beard and voluntarily bald (who does that?) in Iron Man as villainous tycoon Obidah Stane, the Iron Monger.
But it’s no accident that once Bridges went to full salt-and-pepper bearded glory in Crazy Heart (where his character drank McClure branded whiskey, I might add) he finally brought home acting’s biggest prize, and followed it up with an even rougher role of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, reprising the role originally made famous by John Wayne, with a full beard added for good measure. He even managed to play two versions of himself in the same movie, one bearded and one not, in Tron: Legacy, such is the level of his badassedness.
Bridges has also put his gravelly voice to good use as well, both in recording an eponymous blues album he released in 2011, and narrating pretty much every Hyundai commercial ever made. And on top of it all, he’s generally regarded as one of the acting community’s nicest guys both in interviews and his numerous philanthropic efforts. It seems there’s literally nothing this man and his beard and cannot do.
