One of Jeremy Allen White’s most intense experiences playing Bruce Springsteen happened at the iconic Stone Pony club in Asbury Park, N.J., where Springsteen first made his name. During the final weeks of filming, White recalls performing “about five songs in one day on that stage in front of 300 people.”
Just months before, White had been a novice guitarist and singer, dedicating himself to mastering the craft. It was winter, the boardwalk was quiet, and White described a “heaviness” in the air as production wrapped on “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a raw, emotionally charged biopic chronicling the rock icon’s journey.
Bruce Springsteen himself was in the audience at the Stone Pony that day, alongside his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa, and even legendary director Steven Spielberg. White admitted, “Steven Spielberg was there that day,” still sounding utterly amazed by the memory.
The pressure of portraying New Jersey’s beloved son was immense, especially for White, who had recently achieved heartthrob status and Emmy wins for his intense portrayal of chef Carmy in the FX series “The Bear.” “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” hitting theaters Friday, marks his first leading role in a major studio film, and it’s Bruuuuuuuuccce.
“So much of my job as an actor is — you have to summon enough delusion,” White explained, “to kind of have an honest moment. And it was very hard to reach that imagination space or, like, fool myself when I was confronted with the fact that, you know, I’m not this man at all. The man is here.”
Remarkably, 34-year-old White triumphed, earning praise from critics and, most importantly, from Springsteen himself, as evidenced by their numerous recent public appearances together. White’s nuanced depiction of the musician during a crucial period in his early career—when he recorded the strikingly intimate, acoustic album “Nebraska”—captures a fundamental, almost raw, aspect of Springsteen’s artistic essence. Far from the roar of arena crowds, he was pouring his personal struggles onto tape.
Scott Cooper, the film’s writer-director, shared, “Jeremy and I discussed that this is a film about restraint, and finding Bruce at his quietest, when he’s quietly unraveling.”
Released in 1982, “Nebraska” represented a significant departure. Springsteen, fresh off the success of “The River,” his first No. 1 hit, opted for stark heartland tales of despair, recorded alone on a four-track in a rented New Jersey home, rather than delivering more rock anthems as his label desired. In his 2016 memoir, “Born to Run,” Springsteen revealed he experienced a profound emotional breakdown shortly after completing the album.
“It’s really about the act of chasing something you can’t name, and that you don’t know if you’ll ever catch,” Cooper said of putting that desperate songwriting and its aftermath onscreen. “And if you catch it, how painful is it going to be?”
Cooper, who previously directed Jeff Bridges to an Oscar in “Crazy Heart,” his 2009 debut about a washed-up country singer, noted that he strives “to write as few lines of dialogue as possible in all of my films.” In White, he discovered an actor capable of immense unspoken expression. “You always feel like there’s something alive beneath the surface, something unresolved. And that’s what I needed for Bruce.”
WHITE WAS INITIALLY HESITANT to accept the role, admitting he couldn’t play guitar or sing with confidence. He was ultimately persuaded, in part, by Springsteen’s personal endorsement. Still, he described his emotional state during filming as “fragile, the whole time.”
I recently met White, casually dressed in light jeans, a blue sweater, a stylishly buttoned leather jacket, and Springsteen’s own worn Yankees hat, for lunch at the Lambs Club in Times Square — a restaurant not typically open for lunch. Thanks to some publicist magic, we were the sole occupants, a fact that surprised White, a New Yorker at heart who, despite living in Los Angeles, remains deeply connected to his hometown through biking and walking.
The film’s New York Film Festival premiere brought back memories of his teenage years at the nearby Professional Performing Arts School. At the star-studded after-party, he recalled, “I was walking down memory lane, and thinking about hanging out on all those corners in high school.”
Given White’s sudden rise to fame (complete with intense media scrutiny of his personal life and physique) and the immense responsibility of portraying an international superstar, I anticipated a guarded, distant celebrity. Instead, he was disarmingly candid, sitting in a relaxed, quasi-half-lotus position, openly discussing his background, vulnerabilities, and shifting career aspirations. Despite not having to audition for a while, he still felt a kinship with the hardworking New York actors he once was, crisscrossing the city with a backpack full of headshots.
White and his younger sister, Annabelle, now a documentary producer, grew up in Brooklyn’s brownstone neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens, and their parents still reside nearby. Though his 7- and 4-year-old daughters with ex-wife Addison Timlin attend school in L.A., we spent a considerable portion of our conversation on Brooklyn life and public education.
His parents, Eloise Zeigler and Richard White, met as theater actors; his mother later became a teacher, and his father launched a business filming depositions. Before discovering acting, White studied jazz, tap, and ballet, and even now, he unconsciously performs a nervous two-step between takes on set. He wasn’t a lifelong Springsteen devotee; his formative soundtrack, like many early-2000s New York teens, favored artists like Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest.
White and his friends were resourceful city kids. One summer, after finding keys to their local Park Slope movie theater, they quickly made copies (and discreetly returned the originals). “Then we had this key that would get us in the side door,” he recounted. “So we were able to, all that summer, go and see movies.”
Even as a youthful mischief-maker, he was deeply connected to culture. “He’s just, like, a good boy from the neighborhood,” said Ebon Moss-Bachrach, White’s co-star in “The Bear”—where they’ll both return for Season 5—and a close friend. Moss-Bachrach affectionately calls White “like my brother” and often hosts him at his Brooklyn loft, where White enjoys cooking. White has always been outgoing; they embark on long bike rides across Brooklyn, culminating in lavish lunches. “He’s one of the more famous people that I know,” Moss-Bachrach remarked. “And he’s one of the least insulated.”
The sudden wave of stardom, following over a decade of consistent work on the Showtime series “Shameless,” placed White in a situation remarkably similar to Springsteen’s in the early ’80s: at a pivotal career crossroads after achieving significant success. “Those parallels were quite acute for me,” noted filmmaker Cooper, who considered White the only actor for the part. “You only play Bruce Springsteen once, and you only play him at this certain time in your life, where you can completely relate to him.”
WITH A DYE JOB and brown contact lenses, White’s portrayal of Springsteen shifts between a charismatic rock star on stage or in the studio and a solitary man descending into a spiral, his closest bond with his loyal manager, Jon Landau (played by Jeremy Strong). Shoe lifts and a snug leather-and-denim wardrobe helped White capture the iconic posture. Yet, often, this Springsteen moved with a profound, dejected slouch. “I feel like he was one foot in, one foot out the whole time, and never quite sure of himself or anything,” White reflected.
These struggles resonated with White, who grappled intensely with the tightrope walk of his performance. After long days of shooting, he would call Moss-Bachrach, “just dumping all this anxiety on him,” White recalled. (“He was feeling like he was really exposed in this part,” his friend confirmed.)
On “The Bear,” Carmy also embodies a creative spirit at a turning point. In the deserted Times Square restaurant—where White graciously thanked every server—I asked him why he’s often cast as characters on the brink of a nervous breakdown. “Bruce is a man who’s looked over the edge, right?” he mused. “And there have been periods in my life where I’ve gotten very close with that too. Doubt, desperation — that’s something that is not totally foreign to me.”
He paused, taking stock, and gently navigated his personal “honest moment.” “I’m in my early 30s,” he finally revealed, noting he’s the same age Springsteen was in the movie, “and I certainly feel like sometimes I’m on top of it. And then other times, I’m losing it, for sure.”
The filmmakers and Moss-Bachrach played crucial roles in channeling these emotions onto the screen. “Anytime you can share the kind of most soft-boiled, insecure, wobbly part of you, I think that’s like a nice thing for an artist to do,” Moss-Bachrach offered. “It makes the world a little bit smaller.”
Furthermore, White possesses an extraordinary talent for conveying emotion without words. “He doesn’t perform pain, despair,” Cooper observed. “It just kind of flickers across his face.” Moss-Bachrach enthused, “He’s got this autobahn between his brain and his eyes. You just see thoughts — or you think you see thoughts. He’s just living the scene.”
White’s entry into acting began with his middle school drama teacher, John P. McEneny. Standing in the black box theater at M.S. 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, “was the first time in my life I felt like I was able to quiet an otherwise very anxious mind,” White shared. “I still find a lot of peace in that sort of space onstage, or between action and cut. I felt so lucky that I found it at such a young age.”
White and his eighth-grade classmates persuaded McEneny to stage a Shakespeare double-feature: “Twelfth Night” (with White as the comic foil Malvolio) and “Macbeth” (where he played a sword-wielding Macduff and an otherworldly witch). The parents sat through four hours of middle school drama,” said McEneny, who has since retired from teaching and now runs a local theater company as a playwright. He vividly remembers White as serious and focused, “one of the most remarkable child actors I’ve ever taught in 30 years.”
He “could play broken and strong and fierce,” McEneny recalled, “and he wanted this, he wanted to be in more rooms where he could create these characters.” With his parents’ consent, McEneny guided him toward professional auditions; by age 14 or 15, White had an agent.
The career he envisioned back then was modest: an indie film or a play, maybe a few episodes of “Law & Order,” which White thought “would be enough for a year. I’d live in Park Slope. That sounded perfect to me.” (As it happened, he landed all those gigs as a teenager.)
Today, his career trajectory resembles an intense training montage. For “The Bear,” he immersed himself in culinary school and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants. He built muscle and mastered wrestling moves for “The Iron Claw,” a 2023 A24 drama about a real-life family of grapplers.
For “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” he worked with a movement coach, a guitar teacher, a vocal teacher, and a harmonica teacher. The performance scenes were filmed last, allowing him ample time to practice on the Gibson J200 that Springsteen personally sent him—the very model used for “Nebraska.”
“Having a shared experience with the character you’re playing, it’s just like a trick to get you a little bit closer, you know?” White mused. “But no, I’m not making it easy for myself by any means, and it’s not on purpose.”
Some of his closest friends would disagree, asserting that White is passionate about acting and deeply ambitious. “He’ll always take big swings,” Moss-Bachrach stated. Despite all his anxieties, White’s stage performances often bear the strongest resemblance to Springsteen, with his sweaty hair and tensed neck muscles. Ultimately, White found that Springsteen’s presence, watching him perform, “was ultimately a real permission.”
Yet, he understood he wasn’t (and couldn’t be) the superstar. Perhaps that was the profound insight of the role. “I had some breakthrough moments where I understood more, or understood him, or I found some confidence in this aspect or that,” he shared. “But I never felt like I got it.”
Springsteen has reportedly watched the film nearly a dozen times at various premieres and festivals worldwide. White, however, has only seen it once.