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Jeff Bridges is an embarrassment of riches, when you think about it. He’s always been handsome, and he’s aging beautifully and naturally. He seems to treat everyone with respect and love. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. He does so much for charity, especially his work with No Kid Hungry. He’s also responsible for creating some amazingly iconic film characters. And after all of these years, he doesn’t mind talking about those characters even if he’s supposed to be promoting one of his new movies. Bridges has a new interview in The Daily Beast to promote his new film, Hell or High Water, but he spends most of the interview talking about The Dude from The Big Lebowski. And he talks about politics! And how women are amazing. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

Does Jeff Bridges abide Donald Trump? “For my money, it’s really shocking and like being splashed with cold water to see what America is really like. As an actor, I like playing the underbelly of our society and seeing our darker sides. We have a lot of fear in this country, and fear can motivate us to do some frightening things—as it’s done in other countries as well. I don’t dig Trump or follow what he has to say, but I find it fascinating that he’s surfaced in the political arena. But I’m a Hillary supporter and I don’t go the Trump way.”

He loves The Big Lebowski as much as you love it: “That’s one of my favorite movies I’ve ever been involved in, and that’s due to the Coen Brothers. They’re masters. They know how to make a movie so well, and do it apparently effortlessly—but I know that’s not the case. They put a lot of effort into it.”

Jeff Bridges wears jellies, just like The Dude: “I use elements of myself—I see my parallels with a character—and find similar things in my own personality. As far as The Dude goes, I had a lot in common with The Dude in my younger years. A lot of the clothes he wears are mine—the jelly sandals, the T-shirts, and so forth, and you mentioned “abiding,” and I share that with The Dude. I do my best to abide with whatever is going down, and I’m sort of Buddhistly bent myself. My dear friend Bernie Glassman, who’s a Zen master, he came to me one day and said that, in some circles, The Dude is considered a Zen master…”

How he feels about Hillary Clinton considering he has three daughters: “I think it’s wonderful that that’s going down. Culturally, we can benefit by bringing women into the mix. We’ve had this patriarchal thing going on for long enough. Women are so, maybe this is just a male perspective, but for my money, they’re so connected to life in a way that men aren’t. They’re able to give birth, have children, and it’s literally a part of them. They perhaps have a stronger capacity for caring than males. I know that in the Native American societies, women were really in charge: the women chose the chiefs. It’s taken us a long time to come around and see the light on that score. I think it’s a wonderful thing.”

[From The Daily Beast]

If this was someone else, I might mutter something about “hippie nonsense,” but since it’s Jeff Bridges, I’m on board. A think some men – mostly men who have close relationships with their mothers, sisters, daughters and/or wives – think like this. They think womanhood is an automatic connection to the earth and cosmos, that women are just more centered and peaceful than men. Do women have a stronger capacity for caring than men? If we do, is it nature or nurture? I have no idea. But I do like that Jeff isn’t a Bernie Bro! Thank God.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

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