‘When Did I Get That Attractive?’: Bruce Springsteen on Watching The Actor Play Him On Screen

Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set 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 initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a picture of serene calm – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was readily visible,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered preparing himself for an inquiry that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that solidified, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the study he undertook, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can start with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo answered. “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 thoughts about the film were initially simpler. “I reasoned I’m 76 years old, I am not overly concerned 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 helped that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was ready to represent 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 portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed him to return to difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen recounted how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his turbulent early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she turned to him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an utopian space for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And ideally it remains with them for as long as they need it.”