When it comes to iconic Hollywood actor Jeff Bridges, the 2019 Golden Globes freely abides.
When the annual glittery awards show airs Sunday, everyone knows up-front who will take home the Cecil B. DeMille Award this year: Bridges, an Academy Award winner sprung from old-time Hollywood royalty decades ago to star in several classic films, not the least of which is The Big Lebowski, The Last Picture Show and myriad other movies that solidified him as one of the greats.
Known universally as The Dude from "Lebowski," Bridges personifies the laid-back, middle-aged slacker who goes with the flow and drinks White Russians while fending off bad guys. To fully appreciate the aging hippy character he wittily embraces in real life, download The Big Lebowski before for the Golden Globes air starting at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
"We put a lot of thought behind who we pick," Anke Hofmann of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association told EW. "It's not a random choice. We always give it to someone who deserves it professionally, and there's no question that Jeff Bridges deserves it."But we also look at the heart. Jeff Bridges is very much engaged in ending hunger for children and helping the environment, and that matters to us."
For newbies not so familiar with the gravitas of the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association annual honors someone in the film industry–usually an actor–who also engages in the world around him as an activist or philanthropist.
Bridges, for example, collaborates with Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Montana first lady Lisa Bullock to help end childhood hunger as one of the actor's pet causes. Bridges's wife, Susan Geston, hails from Montana, so Bridges occasionally makes public appearances for his favorite political candidates and on behalf of Montana No Kid Hungry, a private grant-seeking program to expand school breakfast programs for the neediest children.
As No Kid Hungry National Spokesperson, Bridge said in 2017 he "can't think of anything more patriotic than taking care of our kids. They are the future of our nation."
"One of the greatest feelings in the world is knowing that we as individuals can make a difference. Ending hunger in America is a goal that is literally within our grasp," Bridges said after meeting with the Bullocks and the Western Governors Association to promote the Montana program, which has provided 1.2 million breakfasts to 5,300 additional students in 80 schools across the state.
At one of the schools, Bridges's theatrical side emerged, as he danced freely with the school kids while the amused governor looked on.
Ever amiable on the talk show circuit and graceful in donning his Dude persona, Bridges, 69, is also a musician and a photographer. Occasionally he tours with his band, The Abiders–named, of course, after his famous go-to line, "The Dude Abides," in The Big Lebowski.
The Golden Globes abides when it comes to iconic actor, that all-around golden-haired Jeff Bridges, sprung from Hollywood royalty.
His father was TV and film star Lloyd Bridges and mother was Dorothy Dean Bridges. Lloyd enlisted Jeff and brother Beau in his popular underwater sea adventure TV series, Sea Hunt (1958), among other projects that naturally projected the boys into show business, as IMDB reports.
Among Jeff Bridges's critically acclaimed performances as an adult are The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age story with other future stars like Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms and Cloris Leachman. He played a young bank robber with Clint Eastwood in the filmed-in-Montana Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and in the science fiction cult classic (1982).
Bridges's roles have run the gamut, as he played opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and brother Beau in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1984) another out-of-this-world character in Starman (1984).
His jam-packed filmography includes a later remake of the John Wayne Western classic, True Grit (2010), in which Bridges won an Oscar nomination for the title role.
Among more contemporary Bridges films are The Contender (2000) and the young adult sci-fi film, The Giver (2014), which he also co-produced.
Geston and Bridges met in 1975 in Paradise, Montana, when he, Harry Dean Stanton and Sam Waterston were filming Rancho Deluxe. She was a waitress who initially turned him down, but who eventually danced with him at a party later. The two hit it off. Today they have three daughters.
A four-time Golden Globes nominee, Bridges won the Golden Globe for his star turn as a down-and-out country singer in Crazy Heart in 2009 and Best Actor at the Oscars for the same film. With the Cecile B. DeMille Award, he joins an exclusive club of Hollywood stars.
Powerful Who's Who in Hollywood stars have won the prestigious, named after showman DeMille in 1952. He was the first recipient of the award, but others since then have included the likes of Walt Disney, Judy Garland, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, Sidney Portier, Barbara Stanwyk, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, Gene Hackman, Robin Williams, Stephen Spielberg, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, George Clooney and last year's winner, Oprah Winfrey.
All, like Bridges, nurture pet causes dear to their hearts.
"Part of an illustrious Hollywood family, Jeff Bridges built a long, eclectic and celebrated career," writes the HFPA.
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