Dern’s life in the slow lane
For a long time, Bruce Dern felt like he’d been left behind.
For a long time, Bruce Dern felt like he’d been left behind, said Marlow Stern in TheDailyBeast.com. In the 1970s, the actor watched as contemporaries like Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, and Jack Nicholson became bona fide movie stars. “As my age group ascended, Brucie was still on the bottom rung, saying five lines on an episode of Gunsmoke,” says Dern, 77. His consolation has been an opportunity to work with Hollywood’s biggest names, including directors Elia Kazan and Alfred Hitchcock. He remembers working on Hitchcock’s 1976 dark comedy Family Plot when a young Steven Spielberg—fresh off his success with Jaws—visited the set, hoping to meet his idol. “Hitch would say, ‘I-I-Is that the boy that made the fishhh movie?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ And he said, ‘Ah, I could never speak to him. He makes me feel like such a whore.’” Two years earlier, Hitchcock had made $2 million for doing a voice-over for Universal Studios theme park in Orlando. That’s why, he told Dern, he didn’t want to meet Spielberg. “I can’t look at him, or shake his hand, because I’m the voice of the Jawsss ride.” Dern explains, “He took the money and felt it wasn’t right. And they never talked.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The rise and rise of VTubers
Under The Radar This anime-inspired internet subculture is going global
By Abby Wilson
-
Book reviews: 'The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip' and 'Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service'
Feature The tech titan behind Nvidia's success and the secret stories of government workers
By The Week US
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin America
Feature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
By The Week US