In writer/director Jay Silverman’s new film “Camera,” Beau Bridges plays Eric, an aging repairman who forges an unusual friendship with Oscar (Miguel Gabriel), a bullied nine-year-old who can’t speak but finds a voice through photography under Eric’s mentorship. For the veteran actor, who made his screen debut as a child in Abraham Polonsky‘s film noir classic “Force of Evil,” playing opposite a scene partner around 68 years his junior kept him in touch with the impulses he feels always serve him best as an actor.
“We call what we do playing,” Bridges told IndieWire in a recent interview. “We play a part. We play a role. So whenever there’s a young person on a set, I find that we’re really in the pure zone of what it is that we do. It’s interesting, now that I’m getting older, there’s a lot of the way I was as a child in how I approach the world. I’m excited by everything I see, and I don’t take things for granted. I think I connect wholeheartedly with everything I’m doing, and I think children are that way, too. In the middle years, I may have lost a little bit of that spontaneity and appreciation of life that a child has and an older person returns to.”
After his “Force of Evil” cameo, Bridges appeared in a handful of films as a child actor, including director Lewis Milestone’s “The Red Pony.” “I had two or three lines and got to meet Robert Mitchum and Myrna Loy,” Bridges said, fondly remembering the experience. As a young man, Bridges was more interested in sports than acting and focused on basketball, but in the 1960s, he returned to acting and worked steadily in network television on classic shows like “Rawhide,” Gunsmoke,” and “The Fugitive.”
This fall, he comes full circle with a regular role on the CBS reboot of “Matlock,” opposite Kathy Bates in the title role. “When I started out, there was nothing else but network TV,” Bridges said. “Now, who knows? Our business is changing so rapidly. I just hope it’s going to last.”
For now, Bridges is enjoying the opportunity to be back on television, especially with Bates. “We did an indie movie [‘Signs of Life’] together a long time ago, and she’s just a hoot. Jennie Urman is our showrunner, and she’s a great writer with a great team of writers behind her. The shows are funny, and they’re mysterious, and they’re thrilling. I’ve been having a ball.”
The sense of fun that Bridges looks for on set and brings to his work — a quality that’s infectious in “Camera,” where the audience can’t help but smile at Bridges’ obvious pleasure in performing — is something he’s found throughout his career on some of his most acclaimed movies. His experience on Hal Ashby’s classic comedy “The Landlord” is a case in point.
“When we did ‘The Landlord,’ every day was a party,” Bridges said. “Pearl Bailey was in the movie, and Hal got her a hot plate that she would cook grits on for everyone in the morning. He always had music going, and it was just a real fun time.”
“The Landlord” also gave Bridges the opportunity to socialize with some of the era’s greatest maverick directors — not just Ashby but his pals. “Hal was living in Norman Jewison’s office, where he had all his editing equipment,” Bridges said, “and all these fascinating people would come streaming in and out watching him put stuff together: Bob Downey Sr., Bob Altman… that was a great experience for the young Beau Bridges to be involved with those guys.”
“That was Hal’s first movie, and my brother Jeff was in his last movie, ‘Eight Million Ways to Die,’” Bridges said, noting that he’s had good luck with first-time directors. “One of my favorite directors is Del Shores, who made one of my favorite movies that I’ve ever done, ‘Sordid Lives.’” That film, which Shores based on his own coming-out experience, became a grassroots success in the early 2000s. “It ran for years in the same theater in Palm Springs — a favorite of the gays and the grays.”
Working with another first-time director yielded one of Bridges’ greatest performances in one of his greatest movies, as one half of the title partnership in “The Fabulous Baker Boys” — his brother Jeff Bridges played the other half.
“When I read that thing, I thought, ‘This is incredible! Who is this Steve Kloves guy?’” Bridges said. “The script went to my brother first, and he really wanted Steve to meet with me. Careers go up and down, and mine was on a bit of a downslide at that point. Because it was such a great script and great part, the studio really wanted some of the actors who were flying higher than I was at the time.”
Bridges ultimately won the part by meeting with Kloves and revealing just how close an affinity he and his brother had to Kloves’ script.
“I had a little Polaroid picture of my brother and I performing on a flatbed truck when Jeff was 16 or 17,” Bridges said. “I used to do a lot of street theater, and I’d do scenes with my friends anywhere — prisons, hospitals — and in this case, we drove into the parking lot of a market and started fighting. Our dad [Lloyd Bridges] had taught us how to box, and we just messed around and drew an audience. We checked in with the police ahead of time so we wouldn’t be arrested, and as soon as we got a big crowd, we jumped on the truck with a couple of funky microphones and put on a scene from ‘Come Blow Your Horn’ [Bud Yorkin’s 1963 movie starring Frank Sinatra]. Anyway, I showed that Polaroid to Steve, and I think it’s what got me the part, because that’s who we were, and that’s what the movie was about: just a couple of traveling brothers, doing their thing.”
“Camera” begins streaming on all major VOD platforms on July 23.
