Jeff Bridges Quotes

I look back at my filmography, and I'm pretty jazzed with the stuff I've been part of. They're all movies I'd like to see.

When I was really young, my mom enrolled me in dance classes. "Mom, I'm too young to dance," I told her. She kind of forced me, but I ended up loving it, and after the first lesson I came back and said, "Come on, Mom, I'll show you the box step." That introduced me not just to dancing but also to working with someone without having a goal.

Like most kids, you don't want to do what your folks want you to do. You've got your own thing.

Movies are like magic tricks.

Pretend was a big part of my childhood.

I'm used to watching old movies of myself.

I want to have all of my faculties.

Hope's interesting, isn't it? I can't turn hope off, it's hopeless.

Working with my dad was such a gas. We approached the work in a similar way. We only made two films together when I was an adult, Tucker, and Blown Away, but it was so much fun to play with your parent like that.

I have my prized possession in my wallet. That's a photograph of the first words I ever uttered to my wife, and her answer to my question when I asked her, "Will you go out with me?"

Sticking with a marriage. That's true grit, man.

Do I have a long-term plan? Kind of. I have a general direction, I think. But it's funny what comes down the pike.

For me, growing up, the downside of it was that as a kid you don't want to stand out. You don't want to have a famous father let alone get a job because of your famous father, you know? But I'm a product of nepotism. That's how I got my foot in the door, through my dad.

I'm very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it's one of the great things about making movies is it's a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character's costume and what that might tell about your character.

I'm one of those guys who will drink to, uh, kind of celebrate. I don't drink too much when I'm down or anything like that. But you've really got to be, I guess the word that came to mind is "creative," about the way you're celebrating. You want to keep the celebration going. I've learned that lesson over and over. Here on the road there's a lot of cause for celebration, but you just gotta get the damper out a little bit, and you want to keep that governor on. You want to keep your give-a-shitter in kick.

I don't really consider myself one of those actors who takes his work home with him.

It used to kind of upset me when I'd be working on a part in my hotel room, and I'd get an idea for a song and find myself on the guitar for an hour when I should be working on my lines. But I've discovered that when I start to shake up my creativity it wants to be expressed in all kinds of different ways. They all kind of inform each other.

Well, there are all kinds of gutters. Life will supply you with gutters.

I just hope that theaters remain. I think there's something very wonderful about getting into a dark room with a bunch of people. There's something cool about that. Brings us all together in one room where we can experience all those emotions.

I do a lot of ceramics.

She was this incredible mom. With each of her kids, she did something called `time,' where she would spend an hour each day doing whatever the kid wanted to do, whether it was play spacemen or `Let's go into your makeup, and I'll make you up like a clown.' And as a teenager you'd be like, `Rub me, Mom. Give me a massage.'

Life's picking up speed.

You know, it's kind of a shame in a way but the more seasoned directors a lot of times have more difficult getting a job than first time guys. New kid on the block kind of thing.

I find I'm most challenged by things I really care about, because I really want to do them well. It causes quite a bit of anxiety. But that very thing you're afraid of is kind of like a blessing in disguise. If you didn't have that fear, you wouldn't have the other side - courage and bravery, positive emotions.As an actor, you get used to those fears, and you're almost happy when they show up. It makes you learn your lines and prepare.

My brother's my teacher, my mentor, and we both learnt all the acting basics from our father.

I'm a pretty basic surfer.

What are the aspects of yourself that line up with the character? You magnify those, and the ones that don't match up you kind of kick to the curb.

We would do improvisation together. And that in a way, had almost a "student-film side" where we'd be sitting there with Robert Downey and Jon Favreau and we're playing around, we're jamming around and we read those pages and in next couple of days that's what we do, so it was a good experience. Kind of frightening at first because you didn't quite know how it was going to work out, but they had some very talented people there so it worked out well.

I'm not real good at romance.

I'm always busy, but I'm lazy as well.

Sometimes, you can not click with somebody, and it can feel awkward.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

Kevin Bacon and I recently worked on a move together, R.I.P.D. Just before we'd begin a scene, when all of us would feel the normal anxiety that actors feel be- fore they start to perform, Kevin would look at me and the other actors with a very serious expression on his face and say: "Remember, everything depends on this!" It would make us all laugh. On the one hand, it's not true of course, but on the other, everything does depend on this, on just this moment and our attitude toward this moment.

The Oscar nomination is great. It's a great pat on the back. And I like that.

Unlike a lot of actors, my father encouraged all his kids to go into show business.

I hadn't talked to him in many, many years. He got a bad rap on "Heaven's Gate." I actually live in the hog ranch from "Heaven's Gate" in Montana. Mike Cimino gave me that set, the whorehouse, that's my house.

Myths are wonderful tools that we've had, oh, for eons now that help us navigate the situations we find ourselves in.

I first got involved with ending world hunger, and I got hip to the facts about it - what a huge problem it was and how it wasn't a matter of not having food or not knowing how to end it, but it was a matter of creating the political will.

Every couple of years we'll watch the movie and it's like watching home movies, seeing the ranch on-screen. But that movie Heaven's Gate, people are appreciating it more and more as time goes on.

Seeing David Mackenzie's work in "Starred Up," I thought that was a wonderful film.

I don't have too much time to jam with the rest of Hollywood.

My mother and my father were very nurturing and wonderful examples of how to live your life.

Technology is such a broad kind of term, it really applies to so many things, from the electric light to running cars on oil. All of these different things can be called technology. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it, as I expect most people do. With the computer, I spend so many hours sitting in front of a computer.

There's kind of a Zen aspect to bowling. The pins are either staying up or down before you even throw your arm back. It's kind of a mind-set. You want to be in this perfect mind-set before you released the ball.

I've done movies in the past that have so many characters and I find it's very hard to follow all these stories. You end up not caring about any of the people and I thought that would be the case in this film, and you had these big speeches for each character, you know, it's like "God that's how you'll have to cut that down in order to paste it all", to edit the movie and my representatives could say "no, you really you ought to check it out.

All of this high-tech stuff is supposed to set us free and make life easier. To me, it makes it more difficult and demanding.

I went through a very hairy period. I had a movie where I was going to play Walt Whitman that fell through. At the time, I had grown this huge beard and very long hair. But then, the movie got canceled, I had some other parts, and I currently have very short hair. So, when I look in the mirror, I don't know who I am exactly. It's interesting.

Tightness gets in the way of everything, except tightness.