Ten years after marrying the woman of his dreams, Jeff Bridges received an incredible reminder of the moment they met.
Bridges is one of the most well-known actors of his generation. He acted in his first movie at age two and since then has starred in numerous films including The Big Lebowski, True Grit and Crazy Heart for which he won an Academy Award.
Since he came from an acting family and has spent much of his life in front of the camera, many might assume that Bridges’s wife, Susan Geston, is an actress. She’s not, but coincidentally, the pair did meet on a film set.
In 1974, Bridges was in Montana filming the movie Rancho Deluxe. While filming a scene in Paradise Valley he found himself distracted by a young woman waiting tables. Even though she had two black eyes and a broken nose from a recent car crash, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He eventually worked up the nerve to approach her and ask her on a date. She told him no. But a few days later he ran into her at a bar, they danced for hours and a relationship was born.
For Bridges it was love at first sight.
“I was head over heels the first time I saw her,” Bridges said in a video for the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Although he was nervous about marriage, two years later the pair were wed just five days after he proposed. They have now been happily married for more than 40 years, have three daughters and have worked on 50 movies together.
“What you don’t know until you get married is that you think all the other doors close, which is true, but this doorway you open [with marriage] is a hallway lined with all these other brilliant doors—kids, deeper intimacy, adventures, and everything else,” Jeff said in the video.
A decade after they got married, Bridges received a letter from the man who did makeup on set of Rancho Deluxe. The artist had enclosed photographs of Bridges “asking a local girl out.” Bridges was surprised to find two pictures enclosed in the letter of the very first moment he spoke to his wife.
Bridges has carried the photos in his wallet ever since. His reaction to the pictures was much the same as his reaction the first time he saw his wife.
“Look at that,” he said. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
