He has played an alien visiting Earth (“Starman”), the ultimate Peter Pan slacker (“The Big Lebowski”), a lounge piano player (“The Fabulous Baker Boys”) and Wild Bill Hickok (“Wild Bill”). So it’s no surprise to hear Jeff Bridges say he’s always in search of something different.
“I don’t want to get pigeonholed or create too strong a persona,” says Bridges, 58. “I like to pleasantly confuse the audience so it’s easier for them to imagine me in different roles I might play.”
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If that’s the goal, then the role of Obadiah Stane in “Iron Man,” currently in wide release, must have felt like a perfect fit. For one thing, the seemingly loose Bridges plays a buttoned-down corporate guy. For another, the often heroic Bridges morphs slowly into the film’s villain.
And then there’s the matter of Bridges’ hair. Or complete lack thereof. Bridges has worn long, flowing locks in any number of films. But this time around, he’s cue-ball bald.
“I looked at the comic book and saw that my guy was bald, and I always wanted to shave my head bald and felt this would be a great chance to do that,” Bridges says.
Director Jon Favreau “felt that I didn’t have to stay so close to the comic book,” he says. “But I decided to go for it.
“Getting my hair cut is not my favorite thing to do, you know? But once it was done, I just loved it. Now I’m looking forward to the next part where I’m going to be bald.”
His new shaved look wasn’t the only thing novel about “Iron Man” for Bridges. Even though he has been in more than 65 films over the past four decades, he had never before been in a film based on a comic book.
But he fully understood the apprehension comic-book fans have when their favorites come to the big screen.
“I know I had a couple of summers where that’s all I did, sit inside and read comic books,” he says. “So they’re curious about how they’re either going to screw up your favorite superhero or make him better than you imagine.
“I think the same thing happened with the Hobbit stuff, you know?”
The son of TV and movie star Lloyd Bridges, who died in 1998, and younger brother of actor Beau Bridges, Jeff made appearances on his father’s TV show, “Sea Hunt,” in the 1950s. And as a veteran actor from an acting family, he has learned that one of the keys to a successful career is breaking patterns.
“I like to surprise myself,” he says. “And I like to be surprised. That’s not too difficult a task, being surprised. I never know what’s going to come down the pike for me, and what will be offered to me.”