‘When Did I Get That Good-Looking?’: The Rock Legend on Seeing Jeremy Allen White Portray Him In Film

Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “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 came out separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of cool composure – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing 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 accept, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to take on, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that set, 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 learning he undertook, it was through the tunes that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White promptly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … connecting deeply 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 absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest 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 touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 originally simpler. “I thought 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 accept greater hazards, 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 typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s foolish self 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 shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was prepared to portray the most reflective 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 rock star.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless 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 are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen explained how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his turbulent early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an echo, perhaps, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he told the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”