December 4 - Jeff Bridges

Image courtesy of imdb.com

On this day, in 1949, Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California. Jeff grew up in a family of entertainers. His father, Lloyd, his mother, Dorothy, and his brother, Beau, are all actors as well. Between 1958 and 1961, Jeff and Beau would make occasional appearances on their father's television series, Sea Hunt. A few years later, when Lloyd has his own anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show, the boys would again take sporadic roles. As a teen, Jeff spent some time touring with his father in a production of Anniversary Waltz. Upon his return to University High School, he got into trouble with drugs and had to be straightened out. After graduating, Jeff spent several years in the Coast Guard Reserves before settling in New York City to study acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio.

While Jeff's first appearance on film was alongside his mother in 1951's The Company She Keeps (he was two), Jeff would create a fair amount of buzz with his second adult role twenty years later. As Duane Jackson in the Last Picture Show, he managed to get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which he ended up losing to co-star Ben Johnson. Jeff got another Best Supporting Actor nod three years later for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot with Clint Eastwood. The Academy recognized him again in 1984 with a Best Actor nomination for playing the alien in Starman. The Nineties brought out both his most famous role, The Dude in 1998's The Big Lebowski, and his most critically acclaimed role, Max Klein in 1993's Fearless.

Image copyright Universal

After the turn of the millennium, Jeff continued to turn in solid performances. He received another Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the President in 2000's The Contender. He worked with Terry Gilliam on Tideland (they'd previously worked together on The Fisher King). He finally won a golden statuette for Best Actor with the release of Crazy Heart in 2010. Since then, Jeff has wrangled two more Oscar nominations, for the remake of True Grit and for Hell or Highwater, both western themed films.

Image copyright Disney

Jeff has made several contributions to the Disney family. He's starred in Touchstone Pictures films like Seabiscuit and Stick It. He was in the Hollywood Pictures film White Squall. He became part of the Marvel Universe when he portrayed Iron Monger in the first Iron Man movie. But his biggest Disney credits come from two movies released 28 years apart: Tron and Tron:Legacy. As Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer who enters the digital world he creates, Jeff created not only a cult following that allowed for three decades to pass before a sequel was produced, but characters that now transcend the silver screen. A Tron themed roller coaster type ride already exists in Shanghai Disneyland and will be available to ride in the Magic Kingdom at the Florida Project... eventually.

In addition to acting, Jeff has also become a musician, releasing two albums, an author (2013's The Dude and the Zen Master, Jeff is a devout Buddhist), a photographer and a philanthropist (the proceeds from Sleeping Tapes, a 2015 spoken word album, go to his charity No Kid Hungry).