While falling down a YouTube recommendation rabbit hole, I managed to rediscover one of my favourite Jeff Bridges scenes of all time:
But the experience of playing Obadiah Stane in Iron Man wasn’t plain sailing for Jeff Bridges as he discussed in a Variety interview in 2016:
“I like to be prepared,” Bridges said. “I like to know my lines.”
Bridges discussed the difficulties when filming “Iron Man” back in 2007, when the script was constantly being changed or altered. He detailed several of the setbacks the cast and crew faced after parts of the script were disavowed by Marvel.
“It turned out that many times — 10, 12, 15 times — we would show up for the days work, not knowing what we were gonna shoot,” Bridges said. “All the guys in the studio are sitting there tapping their foot, looking at their watch, and we’re sitting in my trailer trying to figure out my lines.”
However, it was also during this experience that Bridges learned not to take the process so seriously.
“I made a little adjustment in my head,” Bridges explained. “That adjustment was – Jeff, just relax, you are in a $200 million student film, have fun, just relax.”
I love that he called it a $200 million student film which I’m sure riled up some fans. MCU films are more polished these days (I hope) and—SPOILER ALERT—while Obadiah Stane died in that movie, he did make a cameo in Spider-Man: Far from Home which was just the above YouTube clip as a flashback.