We love a Hollywood story that shines a light on the good people in the entertainment industry. Winona Ryder, who is in the middle of her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice press tour, revealed that an A-list actor was uncomfortable with their age-gap differences during an audition, so he pulled an incredibly kind and thoughtful move.
In the early 1990s, Ryder was auditioning for a role in the movie, Fearless, with Jeff Bridges which involved a kissing scene. The now-52-year-old actress recalled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast what happened in that audition room. “I remember because I was also auditioning for Fearless with Jeff Bridges, and I remember that audition. It was really around the same time [I auditioned for The Hudsucker Proxy], I think,” she shared on the Monday, Sept. 2 episode. “Jeff Bridges, who I love, wouldn’t kiss me because I was, like, too young.”
At the time, Ryder was still a baby in Hollywood, only 21 years old and that felt uncomfortable to Bridges, who was a well-established actor at the age of 43. “And at the end of the scene he was supposed to kiss me, and I was …,” Ryder mimicked holding her breath while she was waiting for Bridges to kiss her. “And he, like, he kissed my forehead. He’s like, ‘You’re, like, my daughter’s age.’ And I was like, ‘No!’”
Bridges shares three daughters, Isabelle Bridges Boesche, 43, Jessica Lily Bridges, 41, and Hayley Roselouise Bridges, 38, with his wife Susan Geston. As a girl dad, he loves talking about his family but also feels like his career often took him away from the people who mattered the most to him. “You’re trying to make good movies … it’s very self-involved,” he told The Off Camera Show in 2019. “I’m making money so we can afford to live the way we want, and the kids can go [to good] schools … but later on in my life, I’ve cried with my daughters … I’ve missed out on so much.”
Ryder’s story about Bridges is downright refreshing because there have been too many tales about actresses feeling uncomfortable in an audition room. In April, Anne Hathaway shared the shocking story about having to kiss “10 guys” to “test for chemistry” on camera. “I was told, ‘We have 10 guys coming today and you’re cast. Aren’t you excited to make out with all of them?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ because I wasn’t excited,” she told V Magazine. “I thought it sounded gross. I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. It wasn’t a power play; no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time, and now we know better.”
Before you go, click here to see the most romantic movie kisses you’ll wish would happen to you IRL.
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