‘When Did I Get That Good-Looking?’: The Rock Legend on Watching Jeremy Allen White Portray Him On Screen

Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer 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, ultimately, the creation of this album that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of reptilian poise – mentioned first spotting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was readily visible,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert videos, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing himself for an questioning that did not come: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so well-read, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an daunting part to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the research he engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. 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 finding some confidence … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 best guitar you can start with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo responded. “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 more straightforward. “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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was ready to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own method 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 unsettling was the way the film compelled him to reexamine challenging times in his own life. The rebuilding 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 described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who grasped 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 marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world 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 hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience carries away. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”