The Angels
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Jeff Bridges, 72, returns to television after a couple of difficult years battling lymphoma – currently in remission – and a terrible experience with Covid. But during that same period, he filmed a new seven-episode miniseries titled ‘The Old Man’, which opens on Wednesday in Disney+. The actor plays a former CIA agent, with dementia, who reappears after decades out of orbit. “I feel very good thanks to this character. I spent a year and a half inside what I call a strange dream and then I came back and found all the people I left behind before my illness. Today I feel great, and I enjoy the opportunity to be back with the team, “says the actor, who also serves as executive producer of this new series.
Bridges decided to star in the series before going through his own health problems. And while cancer and Alzheimer’s are different, the actor acknowledges that his experience changed the character’s perspective and approach. “It’s been a year of battling my mortality. In those moments it seems that all your philosophies and spirituality are put to the test. As a man I have matured with experience and, although I have always led my life in the same way, returning to this character after my illness has made me understand my philosophy more clearly, “reveals the interpreter.
Act
Bridges, a seven-time Oscar nominee, returns to television after decades devoted entirely to film. Despite his experience, he assures that he owes everything to his father, his “teacher of him”. “I am a product of nepotism. My father took me out on the ‘Sea Hunt’ series and I remember as an eight-year-old boy he sat me on his bed and taught me all the basics of acting. The most important thing I learned from him was the joy with which he approached his work », explains an actor considered by critics to be the most natural and least self-aware that has ever existed. “When you are able to relax with acting, you have fun. It’s about getting the story you’re telling out there and not being tense,” Bridges reveals to ABC.
In his role as Dan Chase, the character suffers from dementia and prostate problems, but is also capable of killing several hit men half his age. «I face everything I do with an enormous capacity for resistance. I’m reluctant to kick my ass without committing 100 percent. I have too many other things to do with my life to accept a job I don’t like », he says.
movie vs. Serie
when the offer came [de ‘The Old Man’]I thought the role was very interesting. One of my concerns was how different it would be to make a movie from a series and it’s absolutely the same. You have enough time to do your job well », she acknowledges.
Always remembered for his role as El Nota in ‘The Big Lebowski’, Bridges acknowledges that his character in ‘The Old Man’ is nothing like the iconic role that made him unforgettable in Hollywood. “Dan and El Nota are diametrically opposed. The Nota is authentic, that’s why he likes the public so much. He is a guy who says what he thinks. He is who he is he, take it or leave it. When you’re in the CIA and you’re a spy, you transform into different identities as per need and somehow lose your true identity. Not knowing who you are can be disconcerting. I think that is why they are two such different people », concludes the interpreter about the essence of his most emblematic character and his new role.