You’ve likely seen Jeff Goldblum in a plethora of roles in movies and tv shows, including, but not limited to the Jurassic Park franchise, Thor: Ragnarok, The Grand Budapest Hotel and the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Most recently, he plays himself in The World According to Jeff Goldblum on Disney+ where he comes into encounters with strange phenomena and familiar objects in the name of curiosity.
At Vulture Festival this year, we shared a laugh with Goldblum and Carrie Brownstein, director of Portlandia, in the panel discussion “Jeff Goldblum’s World.” The panel started with a hilarious and light-hearted example of Goldblum’s amusing gift for repartee with moderator Carrie and those in the audience, making it clear that he was born for the stage. Uncaffeinated (as he proclaims), eccentric and energetic, Jeff Goldblum enthralled the audience with his many tales about Hollywood and his experiences as an actor.
Goldblum was raised in Pittsburgh and his parents were his prime motivators on his way to his acting career. Invested in the arts and culture themselves, they would often take him to museums, art classes, tap dancing classes, musical lessons and the theatre. Later on his way to becoming an actor, he would take advantage of any chance to perform. So, Jeff Goldblum did what any logical individual would do and played piano in jazz bars across Pittsburgh, took acting classes at Carnegie Mellon and practiced acting by pretending to know strangers on the street.
When asked about moving to California to pursue his acting career, Goldblum described how the state “became a family and a nourishing place to be of creativity.” For him, the transition from unknown individual to famous actor has “never been challenging, but sort of sweet” as he recalled an encounter with former President Bill Clinton, who was a fan of his role in TV show Tenspeed and Brown Shoe in the 1980s.
The panel finished off with a presentation of the most comical Jeff Goldblum merch that Carrie Brownstein could find on the internet. During this segment, the audience was awed by a custom pillow of Jeff Goldblum with his arms around a monkey, leggings with his face on it, and most memorable, a painting of Jeff Goldblum’s face on a T-Rex.
Jeff Goldblum is famously quirky and hilarious. For more of his ideas and insights—we know we can’t get enough—check out season two of The World According to Jeff Goldblum now on Disney+!