Credit: Far Out / Gage Skidmore
Like many other actors, Jeff Bridges has played a couple of iconic roles. He’s also turned down a couple, too, including a pair of the most iconic movies in the history of their respective genres.
At some point in every established leading man’s career, they’ll be offered the chance to headline a blockbuster action flick. While Bridges has lent support in one or two, with the less said about RIPD, the better, he was never interested in running and gunning his way to heroism.
As a result, he was one of the countless names who turned down Die Hard before Bruce Willis nabbed a $5 million paycheque and a star-making part. Still, that wasn’t the first time he’d knocked back a picture that would secure legendary status and endure as one of the most timeless genre films ever made.
In the early 1980s, John Carpenter was having a nightmarish time trying to recruit an actor to play RJ MacReady in The Thing. He’d recently made Elvis and Escape from New York with Kurt Russell, and while the actor assisted him in developing ideas for the sci-fi horror, he wasn’t at the top of the wish list.
In fact, he was nowhere near it, with Russell only officially cast as the main character in June 1981, making him the last name added to the ensemble, with the start of principal photography two months away and the second unit already hard at work. Before that, the gig had been offered out to several notable names.
“Bridges, Nolte, and Walken passed without comment very early on,” producer Stuart Cohen recalled. “There was the usual initial trouble with the perception that a movie called The Thing could be anything other than a B-grade sci-fi thriller, and it wasn’t until actors and agents actually read the script that they warmed to the idea.”
In addition to Bridges, Nick Nolte, and Christopher Walken, Sam Shepard liked the script but didn’t get as far as meeting with Carpenter or any of the production team, with Kris Kristofferson also a person of interest, while Scott Glenn and Ed Harris did hold meetings, but ultimately passed on MacReady, too.
As much as it’s become one of Russell’s career-defining characters, you don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to imagine Bridges as MacReady. He’s got a similar combination of affability, charm, and steeliness, not to mention he also knows how to sport a long head of hair and a magnificent beard.
He may well have been every bit as iconic as the star of The Thing, but he ended up having a busy 1982 anyway. Tron, Kiss Me Goodbye, and The Last Unicorn all released that year, although none of them became anywhere near as acclaimed, influential, and seminal as Carpenter’s masterpiece, regardless of how much it was despised at the time.
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