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

Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of reptilian poise – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an inquiry that failed to materialize: “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 accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to take on, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, 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 attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician 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 originally simpler. “I reasoned 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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a genuine 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 character-driven drama with music.”

As the project moved forward, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he understood that the actor was equipped to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to revisit difficult periods 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 uncanny; Springsteen recounted how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early screening in the company of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”