‘When Did I Get That Attractive?’: Bruce Springsteen on Seeing The Actor Portray Him In Film

Billed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “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 actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this album that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of reptilian poise – mentioned first sighting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered preparing himself for an interrogation 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 very few questions.”

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

“A lot of focus was going into the sonic element of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can start with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 sentiments about the film were initially more straightforward. “I figured 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was ready to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The rebuilding 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 saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

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

Springsteen told of watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who held 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 amazing that we have that?”

There was an parallel, perhaps, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”