Jeff Bridges Opens up About His ‘Immunocompromised’ Health Amid Pandemic

Jeff Bridges has a new job. The living legend teamed up with AstraZeneca to raise awareness of the challenges the immunocompromised face during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bridges, 72, was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2020 and announced his cancer went into remission in September 2021. He also contracted COVID-19 while receiving cancer treatment.

“I almost lost it all,” Bridges said in the new AstraZeneca commercial. “My immune system was totally shot. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait around for the worst. You can up your antibodies before Covid comes knocking.” The spot was created by creative agency Edelman, with Bridges’ Crazy Heart collaborators, director Scott Cooper and music legend T-Bone Burnett, reports The Drum. It is the first time Bridges has worked on a healthcare spot.

The spots, part of the Up The Antibodies campaign, were filmed at the botanical gardens in Santa Barbara, where Bridges and his wife Susan often visit. Bridges also plays his own guitar, which was gifted to him by Jackson Browne, in the spot. Susan, whom Bridges married in 1977, also looked over the script to make sure it was written in the way her husband speaks.

“It was an incredibly harmonious set, due in large part to the many chemistry meetings the Edelman creative team had with Jeff,” Edelman executives Abbie Griffith and Michelle Tucker told The Drum. “From the outset, he was drawn to the creative idea, and the level of detail the team had put toward crafting the campaign around his personality. It set the collaborative tone from the beginning.”

In a new interview with E! News, Bridges said he was lucky to be alive after his COVID-19 experience. He said he contracted the virus before vaccines were available. He had “nothing to fight it” because chemotherapy wiped out his immune system. “I was just really at death’s door a couple of times there,” the Oscar winner said.

Bridges was in the hospital for over four months and he thought he might not be able to walk his daughter Haley, 36, down the aisle. He recalled hearing his doctors tell him to fight, but he didn’t understand what they were talking about. Bridges was even in “surrender mode,” but his doctors, trainers and family “brought me back.”

The Big Lewbowski actor is even well enough today to work. He recently filmed the first season of FX’s action-thriller The Old Man, which is now streaming on Hulu. His health struggles also strengthened his 45-year marriage to Susan.

“Sue and I were looking at each other and we went, ‘How lucky are we?’ I hug that girl and I get recharged. It’s right there, so accessible,” Bridges told E! News. “I’m being conscious of stuff that’s just right in front of me like love and my family and all of the stuff that’s available for me. I’m just really loving this obvious thing that we live with all the time and take for granted.”