After five decades in the business, the fast-talking, finger-jabbing actor is as intense and eccentric as ever – and wondering what comes next
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It’s quiet in the courtyard bar of London’s Corinthia hotel, no other guests around, just me and a couple of waiters who tinkle glasses and wash cutlery. Suddenly, boom, a Jeff Goldblum goes off – rearranging furniture, sending quotes flying. The 71-year-old actor prowls in, light on his feet, half-dancing as if to a jazzy soundtrack only he can hear. He has in his hand an outstretched iPhone. “I was just looking at all these pictures of you,” Goldblum explains by way of hello. He waves around the results of a Google image search. “These do not do justice to your prodigious hirsute scalp.”
By that he means my hair. Goldblum, I’ll quickly learn, is articulate to the point of distraction. He is a talented gusher of synonyms and metaphors. Later in our interview, he’ll describe this love of words as something of a foible: “I string too many unnecessary, repetitive, redundant words together. There I go again!” But for now, he points to my head and says, cheerfully, “That’s a curly endive salad if ever I saw one.”
His own endive salad, greying these days, is gelled back into a stylish grooved wedge. At 6ft 4in, Goldblum is used to people pointing out his height to him, as if it’s something he might not have noticed. “I say to them, ‘Yes! I know! I apologise! I’m like a parade float!'” Today he is dressed in black: black leather coat, black shirt, black trousers, black boots. His face is tanned and interestingly lined. Without prompting, he volunteers that he hasn’t had any cosmetic work done. “It’s kinda foolish to try to mask [your age]. To pretend just makes you look older and more foolish. Accept it. Present it.”
When Goldblum puts his chunky dark glasses down on the table, I notice that his name is inscribed inside one of the arms in gold lettering. It turns out he has his own line of designer spectacles. “Yes,” he says gravely, then commands, “Don’t be intimidated.” He is like this; he gathers you into amusing conspiracies, he is intense, eccentric, laugh-out-loud funny, overfamiliar.
Hollywood directors seemed to have learned a long time ago that it’s best to lean into Goldblum’s extroverted tendencies, allowing him to meld with his characters rather than try to make him disappear inside them. Whether as a mathematician in Steven Spielberg’s immortal Jurassic Park movies, or as a scientist in Roland Emmerich’s disaster spectacle Independence Day, or as a bunch of brilliant oddballs for Wes Anderson, the characters Goldblum portrays are usually somewhere between 50% and 90% him. “I’m expressive. An available-to-myself type,” he explains of his acting method. “I have to make sure everything is on the surface and ready to be drawn from.”
In a coming movie adaptation of the musical Wicked, he plays the Wizard of Oz. On set, Goldblum sang impromptu jazz standards with co-star Arianna Grande (Glinda) to pass the time. We’ll have to wait until that movie is released in the autumn to be sure, but expect him to play his Wizard big, with winks to the audience and its long-fixed perceptions of him as a ham. Before Wicked comes out, he’ll star in Kaos, an ambitious new series on Netflix in which the story of the Greek gods is given a modern retelling. Goldblum is Zeus, a bejewelled, Gucci-tracksuited dandy who talks, walks and gestures much like Goldblum himself. I watched the impressive first few episodes while deep in my research about him and got the strong impression that Goldblum was sometimes wearing his own clothes on screen. Can that be true?
“Not really. But kind of.” He explains that his friend and stylist Andrew Vottero contributed a few pieces to the costume department. “When you see me take my throne in that kind of Elvis-y, Michael Jackson in Thriller, lightning bolt suit? Andrew found that. And you know the ring that is rather prominent?” Throughout the series, Goldblum wears a signet ring that is faced with an antique gold coin. It’s a family heirloom once belonging to Emilie, his wife of 10 years.
Ah, he sighs, put in mind of her: “Mrs Goldblum! Emilie Goldblum!” She and their two young sons are in the family home back in Los Angeles. He’s here in London to promote the Netflix show, missing breakfast times, outings, the boys’ piano lessons over which Goldblum, a talented pianist, likes to hover, “manning the metronome”, as he puts it. He was in his late 50s, twice divorced (from former co-stars Patricia Gaul and Geena Davis), when he met former gymnast Emilie in a fancy gym. He was in his 60s when they started talking about having children. I have read that when Emilie first said something like, “How about we get married and try for a baby?” Goldblum responded, “How about we visit my therapist before we agree to anything?”
In the courtyard, with typical Jeffian verve, he tears off the story at high speed, with plenty of digressions along the way and, once, an apology for spitting. “Weddings! I was, like, I dunno. I avoid weddings … They’re not my favourite family or showbiz events … I’d been married a couple of other times. Had never had kids … It ain’t nothing to toss off or take lightly. You don’t want to mess it up … So far, it’s been delicious. And enlarging. And sobering. A good lighthouse.”
A lighthouse? “Well, y’know … I’m not nautical … But they help you find your way. They’re a guide of sorts.”
He picks up his phone again. The background image shows Goldblum and his sons in a hotel room in Portugal. Eight-year-old Charlie and seven-year-old River are poised either side of their father, about to attack him with pillows. In the picture, Goldblum is smiling while also shielding his groin. “I’m not trying to be funny. You have to protect yourself at all times, like they tell fighters in the ring.” Either Charlie or River has written a message over the image: TWO AGAINST ONE.
Goldblum’s patently delighted by this. By them. He wonders what they’ll be like when they’re older. “They say the whole oak tree is in the acorn,” he mutters, looking at the photograph. “It’s all in there. Somehow.”
Just a couple of weeks before our interview, Goldblum tells me, he went back to West Homestead for the first time in his adult life. He plays piano with a jazz band and they were booked for a gig in Pittsburgh. Goldblum grabbed the chance to visit the town where he was raised and when I ask why, he says, “Self-examination? I’m ripe for it, always. As much now as ever. I’m sure there’s never an end to it. No full closure … I like all manner of self-examination. It was part of the attraction of acting, early on.”
As a teenager he used to write on the steamy shower glass of the family bathroom: Please God let me be an actor. With hindsight it all seems to have happened seamlessly. He moved to New York for drama school. Before he’d graduated, he was cast in a hit Shakespeare play that won awards. The first movie he auditioned for was 1974’s Jurassic Park.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said to anybody out loud. If anything, most everybody would get the impression that I’m doing well, that I’m comparatively stable, full of purpose and focus. But just between me and me? Let me see. Garden variety moments of anxiety, possibly.” He goes on to talk about sometimes running out of patience with his young sons and his frustration with himself about that. “They are primal. They’re experiencing raw, unexpurgated life. And in proximity to it, at least I find, I don’t know about you, things come up in me more readily and fully. Including temper.”
I ask Goldblum how he talks to his boys about masculinity and their behavior as men in the world.
He thinks, pouting. “Off the top of my head, masculinity overlaps into good humanity, no matter what gender. Which is an ethical, honest and authentic morality; a contributive, caring kindness; a loving navigation through the world.” He prefers to ask a different question of his sons: “How do you be a good person?”
I tell him that his children must keep him on his toes, constantly evolving and adapting to the ever-changing world around them. “What about the boundaries around our personal space?” I ask him, curious about the intimate gestures we’ve shared during the conversation, as he pokes me gently and taps my leg.
“Certainly,” he says, “if I’ve touched you in any way that’s inappropriate, please tell me.” We end up having another
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