‘When Did I Get That Handsome?’: The Rock Legend on Watching Jeremy Allen White Play Him On Screen

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 intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, 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 personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of serene calm – mentioned first spotting White during a audio test 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 greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered steeling himself for an interrogation that failed to materialize: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so thoroughly briefed, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an challenging character to take on, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and discussed “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 sonic element 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 energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced 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 at first less complicated. “I reasoned 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 benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s silly presence 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 wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was ready to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to return to difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction 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 strange; Springsteen recounted how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early viewing in the presence of his sister, who grasped 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 sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of elevation that my audience takes with them. And ideally it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”