50 facts about actor, producer and singer Jeff Bridges

50 facts about Jeff Bridges.

1. Jeffrey Leon Bridges is the son of showbiz parents.

2. His father is actor Lloyd Bridges.

3. His mother is actress and writer Dorothy Bridges.

4. His older brother, Beau Bridges, is also an actor.

5. He has a younger sister, Lucinda, and had another brother, Garrett, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948.

6. His maternal grandfather was an English immigrant from Liverpool.

7. Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles.

8. Growing up, Bridges shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working.

9. He graduated from University High School in 1967.

10. At age 17, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of Anniversary Waltz.

11. After graduating from high school, Bridges moved to New York City, where he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio.

12. After turning 18, Bridges joined the United States Coast Guard Reserve, where he served for seven years

13. Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is also singer, and producer.

14. Began his televised acting in 1958 as a child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother, Beau, on television's Sea Hunt.

15. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart and earned Academy Award nominations for his roles in The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Starman, The Contender, and True Grit.\

16. Some of his other better-known films are: The Big Lebowski, Fearless, Iron Man, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, Blown Away, The Fisher King, Tucker, Seabiscuit, Arlington Road, Tron, Tron: Legacy and The Giver.

17. Referring to his career as an actor and his passion for music, Bridges says, "I dug what an actor did, but it took me a while to feel it, to truly appreciate the craft and the preparation. Plus, I was still playing music a lot, and I guess I had a hard time choosing: was I an actor or a musician, or could I be both?"

18. Bridges studied piano at a young age, strongly encouraged by his mother.

19. While working on the 1980 film Heaven's Gate, he often played guitar with his costar, singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson, between takes.

20. His character in Crazy Heart, Bad Blake, was later based partly on Kristofferson.

21. He released his debut album Be Here Soon on January 1, 2000.

22. In 2005, Bridges, known as "The Dude" in the film The Big Lebowski, showed up at a Lebowski Fest in Los Angeles singing and playing the film's theme song written by Bob Dylan, "Man in Me".

23. On January 15, 2010, Bridges performed the song "I Don't Know" from Crazy Heart on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

24. In the film The Contender, in which he co-starred, Bridges recorded a version of Johnny Cash's standard "Ring of Fire" with Kim Carnes that played over the pivotal opening credits.

25. In February 2010, he was among the nearly 80 musicians to sing on the charity-single remake of We Are the World.

26. On October 24, 2010, Bridges appeared at Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit concert and played a set with singer-songwriter Neko Case.

27. On April 19, 2011, Country Music Television announced that Bridges had signed a recording contract with Blue Note Records/EMI Music Group. He worked with producer T-Bone Burnett and released his second album, Jeff Bridges, on August 16, 2011.

28. On November 5, 2011, Bridges played Austin City Limits in support of this album.

29. In 2015, Jeff Bridges released an ambient/spoken-word album entitled Sleeping Tapes. All proceeds from the album go directly to Bridges' charity No Kid Hungry.

30. Bridges plays many guitars, including the Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentlemen Model G6122-1959.

31. In 2013, Bridges authored The Dude and the Zen Master with Bernie Glassman. Bridges found himself at a party with Glassman and Ram Dass and their conversation led to discussing the parallels between "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski and Zen Buddhism. The book was formed from what has been described as a "transcript of a five-day "hang" on a Montana ranch."

32. Bridges has been an amateur photographer since high school.

33. He began taking photographs on film sets during Starman, at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen.

34. Since 1980, he began photographing on and off set shot with his favorite camera, a Widelux F8. He published many of these photographs online and published a book in 2003 entitled, Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges.

35. Bridges narrated the documentary Lost in La Mancha, about the making of a Terry Gilliam retelling of Don Quixote, tentatively titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which would have starred Johnny Depp as Sancho Panza and Jean Rochefort as the quixotic hero.

36. Bridges had previously appeared in Gilliam's The Fisher King. Bridges also narrated the documentaries National Geographic's Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West, Discovery Channel's Raising the Mammoth, and ABC's Heroes of Rock and Roll.

37. He also voiced the character Big Z in the animated picture Surf's Up. He also hosted VH1's Top 100 Greatest Albums of Rock and Roll series in 2001.

38. Bridges has performed TV commercial voiceover work as well, including Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" advertising campaign as well as the Duracell advertisements in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign.

39. On December 18, 2010, Bridges hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live; he had hosted the show before in 1983 with his brother, Beau.

40. With the December 18, 2010 episode, Bridges beat Sigourney Weaver's record for longest gap between hosting appearances on SNL (Weaver had a 24-year gap between her first time hosting in 1986 and her second time hosting in 2010, while Bridges had a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his most recent one, also in 2010).

41. Bridges married Susan Geston in 1977.

42. Bridges and Geston met on the film shoot of Rancho Deluxe, which was filmed on a ranch where Geston was working as a maid.

43. The couple has three daughters: Isabelle Annie, Jessica Lily "Jessie", Hayley Roselouise, and granddaughter Grace from Isabelle.

44. Bridges has studied Buddhism.

45. He meditates for half an hour before beginning work on a film set.

46. He has learned Transcendental Meditation.

47. In 1984, Bridges and other entertainment industry leaders founded the End Hunger Network aimed at encouraging, stimulating and supporting action to end childhood hunger.

48. In November 2010, Bridges became spokesman for the No Kid Hungry campaign of the organization Share our Strength. Its goal is to present and undertake a state-by-state strategy to end childhood hunger in the United States by 2015.

49. Bridges also supports environmental causes and organizations such as the Amazon Conservation Team.

50. In his youth, Bridges and brother Beau made occasional appearances on their father's show Sea Hunt and the CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show.