How Jeff Goldblum found his groove

last updated 8 January 2015

Jeff Goldblum is one odd duck, said Kira Cochrane in the London Guardian. The actor’s quirky physicality and unusual mannerisms are part of his unique appeal onscreen, but in his childhood in Pittsburgh, those same characteristics made him feel like an alien—awkward and unlike everyone else. Strangely, when he was alone and outdoors, “I felt the seeds of what I feel now—a happy part of something large. I remember overflowing with joy.” Early on, he decided he wanted to be an actor, but was afraid to tell anyone. “I would take a shower, and it has a glass door, which would steam up, and I’d write every morning, ‘Please God, let me be an actor,’ and then I would wipe it off.”

Eventually, he moved to New York and got his wish, launching his career playing off-kilter characters for esteemed directors Woody Allen and Robert Altman. In the 1990s, he starred in Jurassic Park and Independence Day, and he seemed to be headed toward leading-man stardom. It didn’t happen, but Goldblum says he couldn’t be happier with the way things have turned out. “To be honest,” he says, “my days are not spent going, ‘I have $700 million but so-and-so has $900 million, why have you done this to me god, why am i so miserably second-rate?’ Any objective analysis would be that my life has been wildly abundant, lucky beyond words.”