Jeff Bridges Says Marvel Threw Out Iron Man Script on First Day of Filming: It Drove

Jeff Bridges was an integral part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s kickoff thanks to his turn as the villain Obadiah Stane in Jon Favreau’s 2008 franchise-launching “Iron Man.” Reflecting on his career in a recent video interview with Vanity Fair, the Oscar winner said making “Iron Man” was “wonderful” but drove him “absolutely crazy” when Marvel threw out the script for the movie on the first day of filming.

“It was Marvel’s first adventure into making movies,” Bridges said. “It was so lucky to have Jon on there and [Robert] Downey, because both of them are terrific improvisers, and we spent a couple of weeks working on the script and rehearsing together, because we didn’t like the original script and we thought, ‘Oh yeah, we fixed this, fixed that.’”

“Then came the first day of shooting, and Marvel kind of threw out our script that we had been working on, said, ‘No, that’s no good. It’s got to be this and that,’” Bridges continued. “And so there was a lot of confusion about what our script was, what we were gonna say. We’d spend hours in one of our trailers going over lines and exploring how we were going to do it.”

Favreau reached out to screenwriting friends to get their advice on the script, Bridges said.

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“It drove me absolutely crazy until I made a slight adjustment in my brain that was, ‘Jeff, just relax. You’re making a $200 million student film. Just relax and have fun,’” Bridges said. “And that kind of did the trick because here I get to play with these two incredible artists and just jam, and that’s what we ended up doing.”

Bridges went on to call “Iron Man” the “best Marvel movie.” Watch the actor reflect on more of his moviemaking experiences in the video below.

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