'All this stuff is... fun. Yes. Fun.'
Jeff Goldblum has been Hollywood's favourite nerd for 30 years now. And he's still enjoying himself. But his film triumphs can't beat singing and playing in his band, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. He reveals all to Danny Leigh
Danny Leigh
The Guardian,
Friday June 6 2003
Jeff Goldblum: 'I'd come into work each day, and just think: Hmm... Yeah! You know? Yeah! So great!'
Jeff Goldblum pauses, then begins to explain how he chooses his roles. "Well... yeah... I mean, it's never... at the time... hmm... no, not particularly strategic." He puts a finger to his lips in concentration, then carries on. "No... it's much more like an organic, at-the-moment-how-do-I-feel-about-this-do-I-want-to-do-this-currently-right-now... sort of thing. That kind of... endeavour. I mean... yeah. I mean, people talk about their careers and you think: Well, is there a hill of beans that this is going to amount to? Because I'd say not. And so... but! But! No... that's just how it works."
He trails off, nodding enthusiastically. Frankly, his fuzziness comes as a relief. Much as it would be unsettling to find, say, Russell Crowe rhapsodising over Crown Green Bowls and Proust, so it would be something of a letdown if Goldblum proved less than the off-kilter eccentric of his public image, equal parts chiselled leading man and faintly unhinged science dweeb.
No problems there. His 6' 4" frame levered into a slate-grey suit that could have been made for a captain of industry, his vast hands flapping around for emphasis, he leans back and continues, his words locked into a... rhythm... entirely of their... own.
"And, of course, a lot of times you'll see a script and think... hmm... maybe not... but then, and only sometimes... hmm... no, definitely only sometimes, you might think: OK, well, this is... smart. A smart, smart... script. Yeah. Interesting. And that's pretty much the impression this one had on me."
The "this one" he's referring to goes by the name of Igby Goes Down, a slick black comedy concerning the titular private-school dropout and his Holden Caulfield-ish misadventures in a photogenic Manhattan. Goldblum, cast as the boy's property magnate godfather, is probably the best thing in it. Underused, certainly, but still the pick of an impressively starry cast.
"Great... just great," he whispers at the mere mention of the film's director, Burr Steers. "Wonderful" and "free" are his epithets for co-star Kieran Culkin. The superlatives aren't unusual - just the lingua franca of actors discussing (with journalists) their colleagues and employers. What is odd, however, is the sheer fervour with which he's using them, eyes blazing, grinning like a devotee of a particularly ecstatic religious cult.
"I'd come into work each day," he says, "and just think: Hmm... Yeah! You know? Yeah! So great! All of them. Bert and Kieran and, of course, Susan Sarandon and Claire Danes and Ryan Phillippe and... all of them. So talented and interesting and inspiring and unafraid and incredible ."
Evidently, he enjoyed himself. For a start there was, he admits, a certain pleasure to be had watching the travails of Igby while remembering his own arrival in New York at 17, a doctor's son moving to the city to study acting. "Were there similarities? Well, let me think... Igby's taking pills... that's funny... and he's sleeping with girls... that's interesting... and I was stirred up, and filled with wild yearnings of one kind or another... so yes, I'd say there were some... resonances."
And how did he feel about the way the project saw him coming full circle, no longer a young turk but a 50-year-old greying at the temples, a paternal presence both in the story and, you might imagine, on set? There's a theatrical grimace. "Well... hmm.... sure, I was... oh God... aware that I wasn't one of the pups any more. But I still felt very playful and part of the whole acting... troupe. But... yeah! I mean, yeah! In lots of ways I am the older guy in my films and on my films. I mean, I've been doing movies for 30 years now..."
Regrettably, the first of Goldblum's movies was Michael Winner's vigilante opus Death Wish - he grimaces again when it's mentioned. From such low-rent beginnings, however, has come a robust body of work: minor parts in Robert Altman's Nashville and Woody Allen's Annie Hall led to more substantial gigs in the cult favourite Invasion of the Body Snatchers and then, most memorably, Lawrence Kasdan's seminal drama The Big Chill.
But his signature role didn't arrive until 1986, and the icky vistas of director David Cronenberg's The Fly. Goldblum, starring as the visionary but deeply ill-fated scientist Seth Brundle, turned in the kind of performance that made it impossible to imagine anyone else in his place. By the time the film had come and gone from cinemas, he was famous, his persona set in stone - essentially that of an affably wacky chemistry teacher who very possibly had something sinister brewing in the school laboratory.
Did he expect the movie to have quite such an impact on his profile? "No, because as I say, I've never been that... deliberate... it was more a case of reading it and thinking: Hmm... " - I can only describe his expression as lascivious - "... I like it. Oh yeah. Jeez. Hm-hm!" And the image? Was it even close to reality? "Oh, well... I wish I was as scientific as people think. I mean, my dad was a doctor but, no, sadly, no... I mean, I see where that stuff comes from, and I kind of get a kick out of it, but I'm really not the man to turn to in any kind of... ah... medical or astronomical emergency."
Yet that is precisely what he found himself charged with in the movies most audiences will know him from, as his success in The Fly was then parlayed into an (only slightly unlikely) spell as a defiantly cerebral action hero. First, Steven Spielberg hired him for the profitable hokum that was Jurassic Park ("an intensely enjoyable creative experience that happened to involve CGI dinosaurs"); then came both a sequel and the then-fashionably apocalyptic blockbuster Independence Day, in which he saved the world from bellicose aliens with little but an advanced knowledge of satellite technology. All three films were commercial triumphs: for a time Goldblum became, if only statistically, the biggest box-office draw in the world.
"And that was nice," he says. "They were... good times. Nice times. You know, contrary to what some of my peers might say, it isn't so bad being flown to different countries to talk to the press or be on TV, and as an actor it's nice that people have seen me, and might actually, you know... like me. All that stuff is... fun. Yes. Fun."
He beams across the table. His friend and fellow actor Peter Weller apparently calls him Buddha, and it's not hard to see why. I wait before asking another question, just to see how long he keeps smiling for; I crack first. For an actor, he does seem remarkably well-adjusted. "Am I? Hmm. Yes, I think I am... I mean, there's something in me, something that allows me to be... well, at least relatively, not to say unquestioningly, but yes, relatively... well-adjusted. Yes... I think you're right. I mean, I see these little stories about actors and how they, you know, how they hate the pressures of this or they can't deal with that and I sit there and think: You know, I'm not actually sure what you're taking about. You had to sign an autograph? Someone gave you some free clothes? What? What?... I don't know, I guess I just have a better than average... rudder."
All the same, he must find Hollywood's cut-throat atmosphere a problem? He nods so hard I worry he's going to strain his neck. "Oh, I'm a sensitive guy. Oh yes. Uh-huh. And I could be freaked out, and stricken, and brought low by the kind of soul... siphoning aspects of... competition and comparison... and rumours... and that whole where's my piece of the pie-ism... if it weren't for my purposeful, very deliberate, avoidance of all that... poison. Which I practise on a daily basis."
Such a sanguine approach may have been a boon for his mental health. What it's also left him with, however, is a haphazard CV that has often meant more attention has been focused on his private life than his acting. (He was formerly married to one-time co-star Geena Davis, and involved with Laura Dern.) Ever since the defining moment of The Fly, his professional existence seems to have been spent in films that are so big he nearly disappears in them (the Jurassic Parks and Independence Day) or so small they do the disappearing for him: the unloved likes of Transylvania 6-5000, Earth Girls Are Easy, Mr Frost and The Mad Monkey. His screen time in Igby Goes Down may be limited, but the film should at least remind the world that there's actually a fine actor inside that corporate executive's suit.
"Yeah," he says. "Hmm... It does seem random sometimes... what does well, what doesn't... although... hmm... well, the thing is, most of them won't succeed. Most films don't. It's the dark secret nobody out there" - he points out of the window across Hyde Park, towards what I assume is meant to be Hollywood - "will admit. Most films don't find an audience... So you just keep on working and among the vast array of flops that you inevitably accumulate, you stay hopeful that maybe, every now and again, you might be associated with a hit."
There's a resigned wave of the hands, a gesture of seismic indifference. Just before I go, I ask him what his happiest recent memory is, and he says a performance by the jazz band he sings and plays piano for back in LA (rejoicing, naturally, in the name of The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra). Then he changes his mind, opting instead for an "enthralling" session among the students he sometimes teaches acting to in southern California. His grin looks like it's about to consume the rest of his face.
"Because these are things I have a sort of... pure enjoyment of, and no matter how corny or contrived or silly it sounds, I find them helpful. And, oh... I meditate and I read and I just think... well... what are you going to get if you win? You know? Whoever's back you're planning on sticking a knife into, whatever mountain you're desperate to get to the top of, you won't win. There is no winning. And there is no winning because winning is a lie."
· Igby Goes Down is released on June 13.
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