'Tron: Legacy's' Jeff Bridges on playing his younger self: "It was bizarre"
Tron: Legacy hits theaters December 17th and the story buried within this sci-fi tale of a son looking for his dad that got sucked into a computer 20 years prior, is the fact that Academy Award winning actor Jeff Bridges plays two versions of himself in one movie.
Bridges plays both the present-day Kevin Flynn, the father the son is seeking and Clu, the master control program currently creating havoc in the grid. Clu is the hybrid of a computer-generated version of Bridges' 30 something-year old face along with a body double. And Bridges says helping to create the special effect was a little off-putting.
“The weirdest thing about playing myself younger was making a movie when no [regular] cameras were being used,” says Bridges about how his face was captured for his younger self. “And that’s what that motion capture is. They have sensors playing at you. You have no costume, no make up except for a hundred little black dots on your face. And you’re wearing a leotard and a helmet on your head with these antennas coming out which are cameras. It’s very bizarre.”
And what was Bridges’ verdict on the performance of the actor who doubled for his body to fully become Clu? “It was challenging to watch because sometimes he wasn’t moving exactly the way I would, but then I thought the character Clu is a program and he’s different— so it was a good thing. The actor did a very good job."—Ronke Idowu Reeves
