Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges in 2001: "I've been involved with two big flop Westerns ['Heaven's Gate' (1980) and 'Wild Bill' (1995)]. I don't know if Americans still care about Westerns. I hope they do. There are some wonderful ones still to be made."

Jeff Bridges said that the first piece of direction the Coen Brothers gave him when undertaking "True Grit" (2010) was to forget about the 1969 John Wayne version. Their movie would be a return to the 1968 source material by the original author Charles Portis.

In the 1969 version, Rooster Cogburn wears his eye-patch on his left eye. In this version, the eye-patch is worn over Cogburn's right eye, which is true to the novel.

The film is, as of 2019, the most profitable at the box office among those directed by the Coen brothers, by a wide margin, and the first Coen Brothers film to gross over $100 million in the United States. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards including one for Bridges for Best Actor, but ultimately won none. When told of all the nominations, the Coen brothers stated, "Ten seems like an awful lot. We don't want to take anyone else's."

"A large part of acting is just pretending. You get to work with these other great make-believers, all making believe as hard as they can. What I learned most from my father (Lloyd Bridges) wasn't anything he said; it was just the way he behaved. He loved his work so much that, whenever he came on set, he brought that with him, and other people rose to it."

Happy Birthday, Jeff Bridges!