Jeff Bridges on cancer: I fought by surrendering, it’s not the same as giving up

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Fair warning, we’re about to get deep, man. Jeff Bridges, Dude and National Treasure, had filmed four (out of seven) episodes of the FX series The Old Man when production was shut down in March 2020 due to the pandemic. At that time Jeff also went to the doctor about something that felt like “a bone” in his stomach, which turned out to be a 9 by 12 inch tumor. Ten months later, while undergoing intensive chemo for lymphoma, Jeff caught COVID. Throughout his diagnosis, treatment and recovery, Jeff has shared updates and commentary at his own pace, in his own, inimitable way. So it is with a recent article from AARP, where Jeff digs into the mindsets that got him through it all:

On getting COVID on top of Cancer: “I had no immune system to fight it. Chemo had wiped that out, which made it really, really tough.” Unable to walk, turn over or breathe without an oxygen feed, he faded quickly during the first days of his five-week hospitalization. “For me, cancer was nothing compared to the COVID.”

On ‘surrender mode’: “I remember the doctor saying to me, ‘Jeff, you’ve got to fight. You’re not fighting.’ But I didn’t get it anymore. I just didn’t know how to do that. I was in surrender mode. I’d say to myself, ‘Everybody dies, and this is me dying.’ And I’d hear myself go, ‘Oh, well, here we are, on to the next adventure.’ ”

‘The obstacle is the way’: When Bridges was preparing for his role in The Old Man, before his cancer diagnosis and the advent of his own COVID, the show’s producer hired a technical expert, Christopher Huttleston, a former CIA senior operations officer, to help the cast portray senior CIA agents. “I asked him about the philosophies of CIA guys in the battlefield. He told me a lot of them are into stoicism. So I studied up on stoicism and got a lot out of it.” Part of that study was familiarizing himself with a principle based in part on a quote by Marcus Aurelius, which is often referred to as ‘the obstacle is the way.’ “For me, in that hospital bed, the obstacle was death. And that was the way. I kept thinking, Here’s the problem, you know? Here’s the challenge. I asked myself, ‘How are you going to go about it?’ And I thought, I’m a dancer, man, and I’m a musician. I’m going to jam with this situation, you know?”

Not the same as giving up: “I couldn’t understand how you’d fight it. So I fought by surrendering, which is not the same as giving up.” Bridges takes a breath, carefully picking his next words. “What I really felt at the time was love. Love was certainly magnified for me during this time. Not only from the people around me, but also the love in my own heart for them. So what I did was more like giving in to love, you know?”

On finishing filming after recovery: Bridges sounds astounded when describing his return to the set of The Old Man to finish Season 1. “So cut to two years after taking that break,” he says, breathing deeply as he remembers. “I come back to work, and, man, it was like a dream, as if we’d just had a long weekend or something. I was seeing all the same faces in the cast and crew. Very bizarre. Everybody showed such dedication and hung in. We finished it. I appreciate that.”

[From AARP]

“I’m a dancer, man, and I’m a musician. I’m going to jam with this situation, you know?” And the “situation” he’s talking about is death. Oof it gives me chills. There’s so much to cherish about him from this piece (the full article is worth a read, once you get over the writer’s fixation on Jeff’s feet in the first couple paragraphs). He straddles a line where he sounds like a high-as-a-kite-hippie and a sage all at once. There was something I found deeply moving about how all the research he’d done just for his acting prep, ended up being what helped him through in his real life. Like, if one were cosmically inclined to believe such things, the role that required him to study stoicism came at a precise time so he’d be prepared for the moment to come. But that’s enough heavy talk for now, and I think Jeff would agree. Let’s all pour a White Russian, take his word as gospel and abide.

— AARP (@AARP) May 24, 2023

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