I Catch Dead People

Devotees of The Big Lebowski tend to know Jeff Bridges as The Dude; devotees of great acting tend to regard Jeff Bridges as The Man. For more than four decades, he's been turning out performances that range from richly funny to intensely emotional – sometimes he's subtle to the point of microscopic, sometimes he chews great chunks out of the scenery. For years, though, he was regarded as a terrific but somewhat undervalued actor who could never quite make the leap to full-blown stardom. Maybe it was his tendency to place his characters above his own persona – the great film critic Pauline Kael once said Bridges “may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived.”

Bridges is still a character actor, but he's also finally getting his dues – his performance as dissolute country singer Bad Blake in 2009's Crazy Heart earned him an Academy Award, his performance as the equally boozy lawman Rooster Cogburn in True Grit saw him nominated for the same award the following year. And one can see echoes of those distinctive turns in his work as Roy Pulsipher, a grizzled Old West marshal now stalking the afterlife, doling out justice to wrongdoers who refuse to stay dead, in the supernatural action-comedy R.I.P.D. (as in Rest In Peace Department). Roy's the very best at bringing the dead back alive, so to speak, so he's a little reluctant to find himself partnered with an R.I.P.D. rookie in the form of recently-killed cop Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds). But the pair may be the only ones who can stop an army of undead lowlifes from making Earth a living hell... or, you know, un-living hell. “It's a bizarre premise, but I like bizarre premises,” chuckles Bridges in his inimitably laid-back fashion. “I remember when someone pitched me the project, I couldn't quite grasp what they were talking about. Then I read the script and I had to keep going back a page or two and saying 'Did I just read what I read?' Something like that is certainly attractive to me. And then when you've got wonderful guys like Ryan and Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Bacon to play with, well, that makes it even more fun.”

And, of course, Bridges is rarely gonna pass up an opportunity to play a cowboy, even one who's been dead for 150 or so years: “Whenever I get to wear a cowboy hat, it's always a good time for me.” Still, R.I.P.D. is a little more tech-heavy than most cowboy stories – there are your increasingly common lashings of CGI and such bringing the Department's enemies to life. Bridges is no stranger to special effects, having appeared alongside a massive animatronic ape in the 1976 version of King Kong and alongside a computer-generated version of his younger self in Tron: Legacy.

Now is his early 60s, Bridges continues to keep busy (he's got the fantasy adventure Seventh Son coming out early next year), but acting's just one string to his bow – he's also an accomplished musician and photographer.