‘When Did I Get That Attractive?’: The Rock Legend on Seeing The Actor Play Him In Film

Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star walked on separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this album that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the detailed approach of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of serene calm – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was readily visible,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered steeling himself for an inquiry that did not come: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he engaged in, it was through the music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We are pressed for time to learn the guitar,” Simo answered. “We have time to learn these five Bruce songs.”

Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen on the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere in 2024.

Springsteen’s own thoughts about the film were at first simpler. “I thought I’m 76 years old, I have few worries what the fuck I do any more,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead. At my age you embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really odd with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was ready to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as something akin to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film pushed him to return to challenging times in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the finest and most tragic sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early viewing in the company of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an reflection, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”