Jeff Goldblum turns 70: The acting life finds a way

Whether his unique way of speaking, which has made it to the new word "Goldblumism".

Jeff Goldblum turns 70: The acting life finds a way

Whether his unique way of speaking, which has made it to the new word "Goldblumism". The flamboyant charm with which he earned his reputation as a loveable and unpredictable interview partner. Or his exposed "Jurassic Park" breast and erotic pose: actor Jeff Goldblum is not only a star on screen, but a reliable meme generator off it. Even if his infantile cheerfulness does not suggest it, Schlacks, who is almost two meters tall, will be 70 years old on October 22nd. His career from "criminal 1", who broke up with Charles Bronson (1921-2003) in 1974, to late father and dear Disney uncle, who explains the world to us.

With his first appearance in the cinema, Goldblum made sure that action icon Charles Bronson had to take the law into his own hands. As one of three criminals, more precisely "criminal 1", he abuses the family of the main character in "A Man Sees Red" - not a good idea in a revenge thriller. After a major appearance in the horror classic The Body Eaters (1978) and a starring role in the short-lived series The Snoops, a 1986 film would change Goldblum's life in two ways: David Cronenberg's (79) The Fly ".

Goldblum delivered perhaps the best performance of his entire career in the horror film that was as disgusting as it was highly tragic alongside Geena Davis (66). The "Body Horror" flick tells the story of the sensitive if somewhat eccentric scientist Seth Brundle, who, after a fatal mishap during an experiment, is insidiously transformed into a monster - a hybrid of man and fly.

Cronenberg's mix of tragedy and disgust won an Oscar for best make-up in 1987, which in itself is a rarity for the horror genre. Although Goldberg's acting has been acclaimed by the national and international press and has been compared to that of John Hurt (1940-2017) in "The Elephant Man", he has not even received a nomination. "CNN was broadcasting the nominations live, and that's how I found out," Goldblum revealed in 1987. "Up until the last minute, I figured I wasn't going to get any. But I guess that was my way of protecting myself [from the disappointment, n.d.]. ed.] to protect."

Back then, he was supported by his "The Fly" film love Geena Davis, with whom he also met in real life and was married from 1987 to 1990. Apparently she was so angry about his Oscar snub that tears flowed from her: "It touched me that she was so unhappy about it."

As an actor, Jeff Goldblum has never come as close to an Oscar nomination as he did, despite his remarkable output. As a director, on the other hand, he was even allowed to bang along during the 1996 awards: His short film "Little Surprises" was nominated for a golden boy, but went away empty-handed. And so the biggest award the star has received so far is probably the Saturn Award - from 1986 and for "The Fly".

Anyone who is less familiar with the horror genre, or prefers dinosaurs to the common housefly, has known Goldblum since 1993 at the latest. As the flirty chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, who apparently lost every button on his shirt halfway through the T-Rex hunt, he enchanted the then-women and today's meme world. Not to mention his meaningful monologues: "Life makes its way. It conquers new territories. It overcomes all barriers, whether painful or dangerous. [...] Life finds a way."

The actor was lucky that Steven Spielberg (75) gave his character a different fate than in Michael Crichton's (1942-2008) book template - in it the scientist did not make it off the island alive. So it is that Goldblum was even able to play the main character in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" in 1997 and most recently in "Jurassic World: A New Age" in 2022 alongside his co-stars Sam Neill (75) and Laura Dern (55). not a matter of course.

The choice of roles of the birthday child can be described as wide-ranging. On the one hand there are mainstream works, from the "Jurassic Park" franchise to the now two-part "Independence Day" bombast to the ubiquitous Marvel universe, in which Goldblum mimed the coquettish grandmaster in various small appearances.

On the other hand, there is his preference for the somewhat different kind of cinema, which nobody embodies as much as auteur filmmaker Wes Anderson (53). Goldblum has appeared in Anderson's works such as "The Deep Sea Divers" (2004) and "Grand Budapest Hotel" or lent his voice to one of the dogs in his animated strip "Isle of Dogs".

When Jeff Goldblum isn't appearing in a blockbuster, he is a passionate jazz piano player and has already conquered the charts with his music. Since 2019, the star has also been explaining the world to us in his own inimitable way in the Disney show "The World According to Jeff Goldblum". There have already been two Emmy nominations for it, but the actor, who has once again been unlucky in this respect, has not yet received one of the awards.

But maybe it's just continuing something that has already been observed in other respects: Goldblum sometimes has to wait a little longer for certain pleasures. For example, he only received his star on the Walk of Fame in the summer of 2018. And just a few years before that (2015) he became a father for the first time together with his third and much younger wife Emilie Livingston (39). Son Charlie Ocean is now seven and has five-year-old brother River Joe at his side. Who knows: if two Goldblum boys could enter his life when he was over 60 - then maybe a gold boy after 70?

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