“ You gotta kind of… drag me to the party,” says Jeff Bridges. “I usually try not to work.” If it wasn’t for the 73 films, six Academy Award nominations, co-authored book and three albums he has under his belt, I’d be tempted to believe him. In fact, he’s so disarmingly nonchalant that you might think he’s never had to lift a finger in his life.

As it is, since his acting career began in 1970, Bridges has scarcely had a year off. Technically, he’s been working since he was six months old – his parents were actors Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges, and he grew up on film sets, starring as Jane Greer’s baby son in 1951’s The Company She Keeps – but his real debut came in race-relations drama Halls of Anger (1970), followed a year later by an Oscar-nominated performance in The Last Picture Show.

From there, the roles kept coming. He played a palaeontologist alongside Jessica Lange in the 1976 box-office smash King Kong, a computer programmer in 1982’s Tron, and a humanoid alien in John Carpenter’s 1984 sci-fi romance Starman, bringing his gruff charisma and innate gravity to each one.

"This is not a place for a priest": Jeff Bridges and Jon Hamm star in Bad Times at the El Royale

Then came The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), a starring role as the slovenly slacker “The Dude” in the Coen brothers’ 1998 sleeper hit The Big Lebowski, and in 2009, a long-awaited Oscar for his subtly devastating turn as a washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart.

But as he has gradually become one of the most revered actors of his generation, the 68-year-old from LA has remained as constitutionally unfazed as his beloved Dude, effortlessly navigating that impossible tightrope between fame and celebrity (the former has come by sheer force of talent; he is uninterested in the latter). Where many of his peers fell prey to scandal or overexposure, Bridges – who has been married to Susan Geston, with whom he has three children, since 1977 – ambled successfully from project to project, with those same qualities that set him apart in 1970.

Today, he is as equable and unaffected as his reputation suggests. Few of his answers end up where they seem to be heading – they are freewheeling word-association exercises, littered with references he hopes, in vain, that I’ll understand. “Do you know who Bucky Fuller is?” “Have you heard of a woman named Karen Armstrong?” “Do you know what a koan is?” Every time the answer is no, he says – not with condescension, but an earnest enthusiasm for learning – “You might google it to find out more about it.”

Bridges in ‘Bad Time at the El Royale‘ (20th Century Fox)

This zest for knowledge – for a greater understanding of humanity in all its manifestations – is Bridges’s secret weapon. As Dakota Johnson, who co-stars in his latest film Bad Times at the El Royale, puts it: “He is really interested in people.” It’s why he’s so unfailingly brilliant at portraying them.

In Bad Times at the El Royale, Drew Goddard’s wonderful, head-spinning crime thriller, Bridges plays Father Daniel Flynn. Flynn is one piece of a shapeshifting puzzle of characters – including Dakota Johnson’s foul-mouthed hippy, Jon Hamm’s narcissistic vacuum salesman, and Cynthia Erivo’s unassuming but defiant backing singer – all of whom have come to stay at a novelty hotel straddling the border between Nevada and California.

Bridges is insistent that I not give away the plot – “I like to be totally surprised when I’m seeing a movie” – but I will say that it’s not the weekend retreat most of the characters had in mind.

“When I take on a role, firstly I look inside myself,” says Bridges in his breezy California drawl, “and think what hues of myself, my own personality, I might use, and kick those that don’t work to the curb. Then I start to look at my friends and people I know.”

When he did that, the first person that came to mind was a chaplain at his coast guard boot camp (it’s hard to imagine, but Bridges lived a strictly regimented military life for eight years). “A fella named Don Harris,” he recalls. “He was a wonderful guy, turned me on to all sorts of things, rock and roll music… He lent me some civilian clothes and took me to see Jefferson Airplane – this is like, 1968 or something. He was a wonderful influence in my life.”

And which facets of his own personality did he use? “Well, all the words seem so corny and kind of fall short, but I’m a spiritually bent guy, I think,” he says. “[But] my particular brand is, I guess, more Buddhist than Christian.”

Bad Times at the El Royale - Official Trailer

Bridges as the Dude in the 1998 cult classic 'The Big Lebowski' (Rex)

He believes he’s similar to the Dude in that way. “I was sat next to a fella at a dinner party who happened to be a Zen master,” he recalls, “and he leaned over and said, ‘Do you realise in many Buddhist circles, the Dude is considered a Zen master?’ The movie’s all about bringing Buddhist thoughts to the present day. The Dude abides? That’s very Buddhist thinking.”

When The Big Lebowski first came out, it bombed at the box office, and was met with lukewarm reviews – but it has since become a bona fide cult classic. Hardly a day goes by, says Bridges, when he isn’t being asked to sign a bowling ball or recite one of the film’s many iconic lines. He doesn’t mind one bit. Asked if it would bother him if the first sentence of his obituary referred to him as the Dude, he once said: “Oh, no, that would be great. God, it’s a wonderful film.”

Still, Bridges is incapable of limiting himself to one role – or even one religion. “I think all the religions have something to give us,” he says. “I have gone through periods where I was really into Christianity quite a bit.”

There’s more to Father Daniel Flynn than a dog collar, though. Or indeed less – as you’ll know if you’ve seen the trailer. By the halfway point, it’s hard to believe a word that any of the characters utter. But in a rare truthful moment, Flynn reveals that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s. “I wake up some days,” he tells Darlene, “and I can’t remember who I am.”

Bridges researched the disease ahead of taking on the role. What surprised him the most, he says, was the violence of it. “Think how frustrating it must be,” he says. “I don’t know how old you are, but I’m noticing at my age, I have memory loss. You’re asking your brain to come up with a word, and it’s just flipping you the finger. So to magnify that 100 times gives you a slight idea, but it’s a different thing. It’s not like just being forgetful.”

Best films on Netflix Show all 28 1 /28 Best films on Netflix Best films on Netflix Netflix's recommendation algorithm is pretty sophisticated these days, to the point where it can probably determine not only what you want to watch next, but what you'll eat for breakfast 13 years on Wednesday and the thread count of your sheets. And yet, it still has a tendency to spit out some peculiar recommendations. Double features like The Boss Baby: Back in Business and Full Metal Jacket, presumably the result of a four-year-old relative having briefly taken charge of your account. Sometimes you just can't beat a good old-fashioned human recommendation. So here's a list of exclusively great films, from renowned and revered award winners to lesser-known gems. Rex Best films on Netflix Best films on Netflix The Wolf of Wall Street (2013. Dir. Martin Scorsese, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey) It's strange that this title doesn't often rank high in "best Scorsese movies" lists, given that it is so accomplished at every level of production. Compelling, shocking and very, very funny, it tells the story of Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio), a ruthless stockbroker whose fraudulence and market manipulation afforded him an incredibly opulent and debauched lifestyle - until the feds closed in. Cast to perfection, this is the film that cemented Jonah Hill as more than just a stoner comedy actor (so desperate was he to achieve his dream of appearing in a Scorsese film that he offered to perform his key role in Wall Street for free). Paramount Pictures Best films on Netflix Crazy Stupid Love (2011. Dir. Glenna Ficarra and John Requa, stars Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone) Write off this movie as a throwaway romcom because of its sappy title at your peril. Centring on a divorcee (Carell) being reeducated on single life by a suave younger man (Gosling), Crazy, Stupid, Love starts out a light watch that packs a lot of laughs. It's working away on your soul, though, and by the end this surprisingly profound comic drama will have you in tears. Warner Bros. Best films on Netflix Seven (1995. Dir. David Fincher, stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey) Criminally overlooked at the Oscars (it only received one nomination - Best Film Editing) Se7en became the blueprint for the neo-noir crime thriller. Two detectives (Pitt and Freeman) stalk a serial killer whose murders are inspired by the seven deadly sins. The film moves through them with great pace and suspense, before concluding with an unforgettably macabre twist. New Line Cinema Best films on Netflix Scarface (1983. Dir. Brian De Palma, stars Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer) Come for the mafia story, stay for the 1980s nostalgia. De Palma brought style and emotion to this fairly simple story of a Cuban refugee turned drug kingpin, a rambunctious mix of artful relationship drama and gory, pulp action movie. It's always a pleasure to soak up the pastel neon of 1980s Miami, the iconic new wave soundtrack, and the fearsome, immersive lead performance from Al Pacino. That I nearly wrote "stars Tony Montana" above says it all. Universal Pictures Best films on Netflix Girl, Interrupted (1999. Dir. James Mangold, stars Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss) 1999 was a vintage year for cinema and this drama was ahead of its time, both in its brutally honest exploration of mental health and its overwhelmingly female cast. Kaysen (Ryder) is on the surface of it one of the less severe cases at Claymoore psychiatric hospital, but, as she is led astray by the other rebellious patients (Jolie et al), her manipulative personality has an insidious effect on them all. Columbia Pictures Best films on Netflix Whiplash (2014. Dir. Damien Chazelle, stars Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons) This is one of the very best movies about music, and it had a budget of $3 million. You don't have to be particularly into jazz nor drumming to appreciate this meditation on creative discipline. It's a fireworks display of a film which overloads the senses and will have you so close to the edge of your seat as to risk back injury. Sony Pictures Best films on Netflix The Social Network (2010. Dir. David Fincher, stars Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, Justin Timberlake) As with The Big Short, this biopic was hard to get excited about when it was first announced – the story of Facebook's rise from dorm room prank to world-changing social network didn't appear to be particularly dramatic on the surface of it. Thanks to a razor sharp script from Aaron Sorkin, Eisenberg's performance as Facebook founder and neurotic genius Mark Zuckerberg, and Nine Inch Nails's Trent Reznor's driving score, it is however an absolute pleasure to spend 120 minutes with. In light of recent events surrounding Facebook, I only wish we were going to get a Social Network 2. Columbia Pictures Best films on Netflix La La Land (2016. Dir. Damien Chazelle, stars Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone) If you take my Whiplash recommendation and have a good time with Chazelle's breakthrough feature, you'll be pleased to hear his follow-up is also on Netflix. La La Land isn't quite as easy to love but stunningly executed. It's a love letter to classic Hollywood unfolding through the lives of a struggling musician and actor (Gosling and Stone). Summit Entertainment Best films on Netflix Atonement (2007. Dir. Joe Wright, stars Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Benedict Cumberbatch) This beautifully-acted adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel centres on precocious 13-year-old writer Briony Tallis (Ronan) and the lives she irreversibly changes when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he didn't commit. The cinematography is breathtaking; you'll want to hang stills from the film on your wall. Universal Pictures Best films on Netflix Good Will Hunting (1997. Dir. Gus Van Sant, stars Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver) Damon and Affleck penned one of the all-time great scripts here, telling the story of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Boston (Damon) who happens to also be a self-taught maths genius. Robin Williams gives an unforgettably tender performance as his therapist, as the film probes deep philosophical questions and examines the worth of knowledge. Miramax Best films on Netflix Children of Men The year is 2027, and two decades of human infertility have left society in ruins. This is no mild dystopia – there's only one functioning government left in the world. Clive Owen plays civil servant who (mild to medium spoiler alert) who discovers a refugee is pregnant and must get her to safety amid chaos and rioting. Engrossing from start to finish, the thriller is notable for its daring single-shot sequences, which saw long strings of action captured in one take thanks to some nifty camerawork. Alamy Best films on Netflix Rain Man This comedy road movie swept the board at the 1988 Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Dustin Hoffman. His chemistry with Cruise is fabulous to watch. Cruise's hustler character finds his inheritance has been given to an autistic savant brother (Hoffman) he knew nothing about. He initially tries to exploit Raymond's gift for numbers, but ends up warming to him and the pair establish an unusual and touching sibling relationship. Rain Man also features on our list of movie mistakes that only made their scenes better. Best films on Netflix Fantastic Mr Fox (2009. Dir. Wes Anderson, stars George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray) Almost a decade before Isle of Dogs came Anderson's first foray into stop-motion animation, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1970 children's novel, Fantastic Mr Fox. As quirky and detail-orientated as you would expect for the auteur, this is a film made with a lot of love that will please viewers of all generations. 20th Century Fox Best films on Netflix Best films on Netflix Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016. Dir. Aktiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, stars Andy Bamberg, Schaffer, Taccone, Joan Cusack, Maya Rudolph) The Lonely Island gang give the modern pop industry a much needed ribbing in this mockumentary, which centres on a Justin Bieber-esque popstar known as Connor4Real (Samberg) as he ditches his boyband mates and embarks on a solo career. Hugely funny, it skewers everything from stadium show gimmicks to celebrities' use of social media. Keep your eyes people for an amazing TMZ parody. Universal Pictures Best films on Netflix 20th Century Women (2016. Dir. Mike Mills, stars Annette Benning, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig) Given the male egos on the geopolitical stage at the minute, there's something quite timely about this story of a boy being raised by women amid a spirit of freedom prevalent in Santa Barbara in 1979. Annette Benning shows why she is one of Hollywood's greats, in an increasingly rare lead role. A24 Best films on Netflix Nightcrawler (2014. Dir. Dan Gilroy, stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed) Realising that his sensitive demeanour is actually weirdly creepy was the best thing Gyllenhaal could do for his career. With Nightcrawler, he quit playing heroic soldiers and explorers and took on a sinister video journalist obsessed with covering the most grim and violent crime scenes he can scramble to. An underrated thriller with a lot to say about American news consumption. Open Road Films Best films on Netflix Loving Vincent (2017. Dir. Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, stars Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory, Aidan Turner) Each of this film's 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, created painstakingly by a team of artists employing the same techniques as Vincent van Gogh. If that fact doesn't get you to at least stick this film on and give it a chance to draw you in, I don't know what will. Altitude Best films on Netflix Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017. Dir. Miloš Forman, stars Jim Carrey) A film about Jim Carrey's portrayal of Andy Kaufman in 1999 film Man on the Moon might sound niche, but this documentary transcends its behind-the-scenes premise. Carrey stayed in character for the entire production of the biopic, infuriating and inspiring his co-stars. Here we find out why, and get to spend some time in Carrey's mind, which is not always a very happy place to be. A surprisingly moving watch. Netflix Best films on Netflix The Invitation (2015. Dir Karyn Kusama, stars Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard) There's neither witchcraft nor unexplained supernatural goings on in this horror, which takes place entirely at an incredibly awkward dinner party. The hosts will just not stop being creepy. Protagonist Will seems to be the only guest convinced something is not quite right, but is it all in his head? Drafthouse Best films on Netflix Nymphomaniac volumes I & II (2013. Dir. Lars von Trier, stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe) The third part of Lars von Trier's so-called "Depression Trilogy" (following Antichrist and Melancholia), Nymphomaniac is probably the experimental director's most accessible film. Separated into two parts, it chronicles a young woman's (Stacy Martin and later Gainsbourg) sexual history, and the often dangerous impact it has on her life. Les Films du Losange Best films on Netflix Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011. Dir. David Gelb, stars Jiro Ono) Certainly the best film ever made about sushi and possibly the best film ever made about food, Jiro Dreams of Sushi centres on 85-year-old Jiro Ono, the owner of a Michelin three-star restaurant located in a Tokyo subway station. Jiro is one of the highest-regarded chefs in the world, but is any level of acclaim good enough for this uber-perfectionist? Magnolia Pictures Best films on Netflix Layer Cake (2004. Dir. Matthew Vaughn, stars Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Ben Whishaw, Sally Hawkins) Ever wondered how Daniel Craig ended up playing James Bond? Look no further than this gritty mob drama, in which he plays a suave and solemn cocaine supplier, drawn deeper than he would like into London's criminal underbelly. Sony Pictures Best films on Netflix God's Own Country (2017. Dir. Francis Lee, stars Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu) "Same-sex lovers struggle to just be themselves in a small town where being gay is frowned upon" may be a story we've seen many, many times on the big screen now, but this British drama just does it so beautifully, and with a budget of only £1 million. Johnny (O'Connor) is a bored and bitter young farmer in Yorkshire, but his life is turned upside down when Romanian migrant worker Gheorge (Secăreanu) arrives and soothes his weary soul. Orion Pictures Best films on Netflix Good Time (2017. Dir. the Safdie brothers, stars Robert Pattinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh) A scintillating little film, this centres on one night in the life of Constantine (Pattinson) and his mentally-handicapped brother Nick (Ben Safdie) as they bungle a bank robbery and are hounded by the police. Harnessing the same piss and vinegar spirit as a Heat or a Carlito's Way, this will make you nostalgic for the action movie golden age of the 1990s. A24 Best films on Netflix Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017. Dir. Chris Moukarbel, stars Lady Gaga) Lady Gaga is a fascinating figure in that she exists in a space within the pop industry entirely of her own. We get a glimpse of her world in this documentary, which encounters her struggle with chronic pain caused by fibromyalgia, her Super Bowl LI halftime show, her guest role in American Horror Story and her feud with Madonna. Netflix

Bridges, truth be told, does seem rather forgetful – usually because he’s got ahead of himself and veered eagerly off topic. “Why am I talking about that? What was the question you just asked? I got off track...” he says at one point. At another, “What was your question? I had something on the tip of my tongue. Maybe it’ll pop up again.”

I wonder (apropos of nothing...) how he stops his mind drifting when he’s acting; how he manages to stay so steadfastly in the moment. “Does my mind drift to... how does that go again?” I repeat the question. “Ahh, it’s not drifting out of character too much, you just don’t want to be seen to become a habit. It sounds so corny, but how you start a scene is very important, and for me it’s very important to get back to zero, to that empty place where the performance can be as fresh as possible.”

He’s figured out a number of strange techniques for doing this. “A lot of times I’ll purposely confuse myself,” he says, “whether it’s spinning around, humming a funny tune, just fooling myself a little bit. Acting is fooling yourself to a large extent.”

The fear of making a mistake, he says, can be paralysing to an actor. “So you should do something odd, whether it’s a somersault or, you know, something that puts you in a certain space to receive what’s coming down.”

I imagine, though, that it would have been a little jarring to have done a somersault before shooting some of Bad Times at the El Royale’s darker, more violent scenes – and there are plenty of them. “If movies are about telling the truth and showing society back to itself,” Bridges once pondered, “how do you do that without making people, in turn, imitate that truth?” Did he have to think carefully about the film’s use of guns? Particularly given his passionate involvement with the gun-control movement.

Bridges starred alongside Robert Duvall and Maggie Gyllenhall in 2009's 'Crazy Heart' (Rex)

“I hope that there wasn’t gratuitous...” He thinks for a moment. “You’ve got to show that violence in order to show the whole picture,” he eventually decides, “to tell this story in the most powerful way. Nature – and life – has a violent side to it, you know?”

There have been a few times, recently, when Bridges has been confronted with this in his own life. Earlier this year, his house in California was wiped out by debris flow from a mudslide that killed 21 people, caused by a series of wild fires the previous month. “I had a first-hand experience of climate change,” he says. “It brings it home. It makes the whole situation stand out.” He became even more convinced that we need to “get busy and turn this thing around”.

Recently, he co-produced and narrated the documentary Living in the Future’s Past, which reflects on the environmental challenges the world is facing. He hopes it will become part of school curricula. “I love the Earth,” he says, “and I want to make it a beautiful place, not only for myself but for my kids, my grandkids, you know, the future.

“I saw it as an opportunity,” he continues, “to make a difference, to head towards the image of the world that I wanna create. You’ve got Trump, and you’ve got a lot of the politicians who want to take us in another way, and that’s inspired me to take action.

“That’s the upside of Trump. My personal battle with myself would be cynicism, throwing up my hands – ‘What good could the individual do?’ But when you see what other individuals are doing, you don’t wanna head that way. You better get to work.”

When he finished working on the film, he felt more optimistic about where humanity is heading. This is where Bucky Fuller comes in. Have I heard of him? “He’s an inventor, scientist, philosopher,” explains Bridges when the answer is, again, no.

“His most famous invention is the geodesic dome. He noticed that with the big oil tankers in the ocean, it took too much energy to have a rudder big enough to turn the ship. So they came up with the brilliant, simple solution of adding a little tiny rudder, called a trim tab, onto the big rudder. The little rudder turns the big rudder; the big rudder turns the ship! This is a metaphor, for the way individuals affect society.“

With both his choice of roles – through which he holds humanity up to the light and examines all the colours that shine through – and his political and social activism, Bridges hopes he can help make the world’s big rudder turn a little more smoothly, and for a little longer.

“I like to think of myself as a trim tab,” he says. “We’re all these little rudders. We’re all individuals. But we’re connected – and we can turn the ship, you know?”