Jeff Bridges Hated How ‘Tron: Legacy’ De-Aged Him: ‘I Looked More Like Bill Maher’

While the recent actor and writer strikes made limiting the use of artificial intelligence central to their bargaining platforms, Jeff Bridges may have come up with the definitive argument against A.I. 

On a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, host Josh Horowitz pointed out that “there’s probably no one more scanned in the metaverse than Jeff Bridges. Your face, your body.”

“Maybe so!” Bridges agreed in a humorously ominous voice. 

“Someone has that,” said Horowitz. “Does that scare you a little bit? That like 150 years from now they can recreate you?”

That is just the new reality, Bridges acknowledged. When he books an acting gig going forward, producers will be leasing his image. But that doesn’t mean he’s always happy with the results. When Bridges starred in 2010’s Tron: Legacy, for example, it was one of the first films to use artificial intelligence to alter the appearance of actors to resemble their younger selves. “I got scanned in the computer for when we did Tron 2, what was it called? Legacy,” he half-remembered. “And I wasn’t particularly fond of that recreation of myself. I thought I looked more like Bill Maher than myself.” 

Yikes! Make that Argument #1 in any new legislation banning the use of A.I. in Hollywood.

Then again, Bridges and Horowitz agree that the technology has improved tremendously. No more do de-aged Hollywood legends look like cynical podcast hosts looking to date Playboy’s 2004 Cybergirl of the Month.

The original Tron from 1982 didn’t de-age Bridges, but it required funky technology nonetheless. “It was so bizarre,” Bridges recalled about the movie’s rudimentary visual tools to imagine the future. Without high-powered computers to create reality from nothing, Tron “shot in 70 millimeter black and white, hand tinted by a bunch of ladies in Korea.”

“We had black duvetyne, it was this set with white adhesive tape on the thing,” he said. “Everybody was encouraged to wear colorful clothes ’cause our suits were all black, but you would go outside after a day’s work of being in that black-and-white atmosphere and — boom! — color would just run into you. Wonderful.” 

Bridges isn’t done with the Tron universe yet. He’ll appear again as master video game creator Kevin Flynn in Tron: Aries, set for release late next month. Computer-generated imagery and artificial intelligence will be relied upon more than ever, but don’t expect the technology to transform Bridges into Maher yet again. 

It’s a science-fiction flick, not a horror movie.