Jeff Bridges shared that his health is “great” three years after a scare put him at death’s door.
The “Big Lebowski” star, 74, said Monday night that being so sick was a “learning experience,” one that he is grateful to have put behind him.
“It’s amazing the way the mind can forget all that stuff,” he told Page Six exclusively at the 49th Chaplin Award Gala at Lincoln Center, where he was honored.
“I don’t think too much about the past,” Bridges added.
The actor was dealt an almost lethal one-two punch in January 2021 when he contracted COVID-19 while battling cancer.
“I was pretty close to dying. The doctors kept telling me, ‘Jeff, you’ve got to fight. You’re not fighting.’ I was in surrender mode,” he told People in May 2022. “I was ready to go. I was dancing with my mortality.”
Bridges, whose non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma went into remission that September, explained to the magazine, “I had no defenses. That’s what chemo does — it strips you of all your immune system. I had nothing to fight it. COVID made my cancer look like nothing.”
The Oscar winner has starred in dozens of movies, including “Tron,” “Starman,” “The Last Picture Show” and “Crazy Heart,” but he knows there is one role that stands out from all the others: The Dude in the 1998 Coen Brothers cult classic “The Big Lebowski.”
And he has no issue with it.
“I can see why,” he exclaimed to us. “It’s the Coen Brothers. They’re real masters. They know how to do it. [They] make it look easy, right? I think ‘Big Lebowski’ is right up with there with ‘2001 [A Space Odyssey].’ I mean, that’s my biased [opinion]. I love that movie!”
Bridges attended the splashy event with his wife of nearly 48 years, Susan Bridges, along with Rosie Perez, Kieran Culkin, Sharon Stone, Sarah Paulson and Ella Beatty.
Past recipients of the Chaplin Award include Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee, Helen Mirren, Viola Davis and Tom Hanks.
