Actor Jeff Bridges, 74, filmed The Old Man’s rough-and-tumble scenes after cancer battle 

LOS ANGELES – Spy thriller The Old Man (2022 to present) has been praised for its depiction of ageing former spy Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), who is forced out of retirement when his past catches up with him.

And for its second season debuting on Disney+ on Sept 13, the Emmy-nominated drama will double down on fight scenes for its septuagenarian hero.

After a long cat-and-mouse game, Chase teams up with former colleague and sometime foe, Harold Harper (John Lithgow), to rescue a woman both claim as their daughter when she is kidnapped in Afghanistan.

At a press event in Los Angeles earlier in 2024, Bridges, 74, says he felt good returning to film the action-packed series despite having battled cancer during the making of the first season.

“I’m feeling great now and I’m coming back for more punishment,” jokes the American star, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as an alcoholic country singer in the romantic drama Crazy Heart (2009).

“What is so bizarre is in the first season, when I was doing these fight scenes, I had a nine-by-12 inch tumour in my stomach that didn’t hurt at all,” says Bridges, who in 2020 revealed he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer, and had undergone chemotherapy.

“But I’m feeling great now. Fortunately, we have stunt coordinators who are wonderful to work with,” says Bridges, who has received seven Oscar nominations in all, including for the westerns Hell Or High Water (2016) and True Grit (2010), and picked up an Emmy nomination for The Old Man role.

“There’s still kind of a kid quality in me (when) on the horse and stuff. You just tumble and have fun,” says the actor, who in 2021 announced that his cancer was in remission.

Co-star Lithgow, 78, says Bridges’ action scenes are one of the highlights of the show.

“Some of the greatest scenes in The Old Man are Jeff’s fight scenes – an old man having to summon up the strength and skill he had 50 years ago,” says the American actor, who won three Emmys for playing an alien on the sitcom 3rd Rock From The Sun (1996 to 2001).

He urged viewers to watch one of Bridges’ old movies, Bad Company (1972), a western set during the American Civil War.

Playing “a raw-boned young punk, you’ve got to see Jeff’s fight scene in that film in order to deeply appreciate what he’s doing now”, says Lithgow, who played former British prime minister Winston Churchill in historical drama The Crown (2016 to 2023).

And the actor says he never doubted Bridges’ ability to pull off any of those physically demanding moves.

“I never worry about Jeff. I always knew he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t know he could do this.

“And it’s been one of the great and extremely moving backstage dramas of these four years, his courage and persistence,” Lithgow adds.

“Nobody could’ve survived what he’s been through, and going back to work the way he has, it’s been incredibly inspiring.”

Lithgow feels he himself has been thriving in this stage of his career too.

“It’s been an interesting last 10 years. I’ve sort of entered into my old man chapter and, actually, this is the rosiest time in my career,” says the star, who also played the late American television executive Roger Ailes in the biographical drama Bombshell (2019).

“Because I’m finally old enough to play all these old roles.

“Winston Churchill and Roger Ailes and Harold Harper – I’m leaping from one great role to another.”

This is also one of the few stories revolving around two old men, he notes.

“But it’s old men whose lives are haunted by demons, old memories, things they wished they’d done differently and things they know they did wrong,” Lithgow says. “And all these things are just fascinating.”