Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges met Susan Geston while filming Rancho Deluxe in Montana, where she was working as a waitress. They married in 1977 and have three daughters, Isabelle, Jessica, and Hayley.

In 2020, Bridges announced that he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and was undergoing chemotherapy. He later said that the cancer was in remission, and that he had also contracted COVID-19 during treatment, spending several weeks in the hospital before a lengthy recovery.

Born into an entertainment family, Bridges is the son of actor Lloyd Bridges and writer and actress Dorothy Bridges. He appeared with his father and older brother Beau Bridges on Sea Hunt and The Lloyd Bridges Show. After graduating from University High School in Los Angeles, he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City and served in the United States Coast Guard Reserve from 1967 to 1975.

Bridges made his feature-film debut in Halls of Anger in 1970 and gained major recognition as Duane Jackson in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). The performance earned him his first Academy Award nomination. He followed it with roles in Fat City, The Last American Hero, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which brought another Oscar nomination.

Bridges established his range through roles in films including the 1976 remake of King Kong, Heaven's Gate, TRON, Starman, Jagged Edge, The Morning After, and Tucker: The Man and His Dream. His performance as an alien in Starman earned a third Academy Award nomination. In The Fabulous Baker Boys, he appeared alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and his brother Beau Bridges.

His role as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998) became his best-known performances. The film developed a dedicated cult following, and the relaxed, eccentric character became closely associated with Bridges. He later worked with the Coen brothers again in True Grit, playing U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn.

Bridges received further Oscar nominations for The Contender, True Grit, and Hell or High Water, as well as for earlier roles in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Starman. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the troubled country musician Bad Blake in Crazy Heart (2009). The performance also earned him a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

His later film work includes Iron Man, Tron: Legacy, The Giver, Seventh Son, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and Bad Times at the El Royale. He began starring as retired CIA agent Dan Chase in the FX series The Old Man in 2022, earning Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Bridges received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2019 and the Chaplin Gala Award in 2024.

Bridges has written and performed songs while pursuing his acting career. He released the albums Be Here Soon in 2000 and Jeff Bridges in 2011, the latter produced by T Bone Burnett, and released the ambient spoken-word album Sleeping Tapes in 2015. He also collaborated with Zen teacher Bernie Glassman on The Dude and the Zen Master, a book connecting the character from The Big Lebowski with Zen ideas.

Bridges has practiced photography since high school and began photographing film sets during the making of Starman. His work appeared in the books Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges and Jeff Bridges: Pictures Volume Two, and he received an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in 2013. In 1984, he helped found the End Hunger Network and later became a spokesman for Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign.