Jeff Bridges has been a lot of things: a stoner who loves bowling, a boxer, a computer programer, a country musician and even a ghost-hunting dead U.S. marshal from the 1800s. But there’s a first for everything, including his latest character: a witch-hating, dragon-fighting, all-powerful master.
That’s Bridges’ role in “Seventh Son,” an adventure fantasy that reunites the actor with his former “Big Lebowski” co-star Julianne Moore. She plays an evil witch-dragon hybrid and he’s John Gregory, aka the Spook. (Sadly, they don’t have a bowling dream sequence again.) But besides strangling giant bears and blowing glitter into a possessed child’s face, Bridges has also recorded an album to help people fall asleep. (Hey, why not?) HuffPost Entertainment sat down with the Oscar winner to listen to him hum and find out how The Dude inspired many of his recent roles.
You’ve said before that you like to resist working unless you’re really intrigued by a project. What was it about this film?
I’m a big fan of myth, of Joseph Campbell and author Robert Johnson. Myths are these ancient stories that, if we pay attention to them, we can learn quite a bit about our current situation. This is the myth of the Seventh Son having special powers. That was intriguing. And reading Joseph Delaney’s book The Spook’s Apprentice, I really enjoyed that. Sergei Bodrov directed our film, knowing that he was going to be the head of this deal, and of course Julianne coming on board.
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What was that process like, creating music to put people to sleep?
So you know the one where my wife comes in? So I’m out on the side of our house there in the morning doing — [breaks into humming] — just humming. And I end it, and she comes out and goes “What are you doing? You’re doing the ‘Sleep Tapes’ now?” And this is all like real time, so that’s on [the album track].
A lot of it’s done on an iPhone. I wanted it to have a funky feeling, not knowing where the mic is. Then mixing that with some things we did in the studio, some things we did on field recordings. We got to hike into Mescal Canyon, that’s the B Side. We had a ball. Then the clincher of the whole thing, the most important aspect of it is that all the sales goes to support No Kid Hungry. That’s a wonderful campaign all about ending childhood hunger in our country and not many people know how serious a problem it is.
“Seventh Son” opens Feb. 6.
