“Self-examination? I’m ripe for it, always. As much now as ever. I’m sure there’s never an end to it. No full closure.” […]
What sort of “Goldblum mania”?
“I don’t think I’ve ever said to anybody out loud. If anything, most everybody would get the impression that I’m doing well, that I’m comparatively stable, full of purpose and focus. But just between me and me? Let me see. Garden variety moments of anxiety, possibly.” He goes on to talk about sometimes running out of patience with his young sons and his frustration with himself about that. “They are primal. They’re experiencing raw, unexpurgated life. And in proximity to it, at least I find, I don’t know about you, things come up in me more readily and fully. Including temper.” […]
I ask Goldblum how he talks to his boys about masculinity and their behaviour as men in the world.
He thinks, pouting. “Off the top of my head, masculinity overlaps into good humanity, no matter what gender. Which is an ethical, honest and authentic morality; a contributive, caring kindness; a loving navigation through the world.” He prefers to ask a different question of his sons: “How do you be a good person?”
He’ll say to them, “‘Listen. I don’t want to step on your spirit, or suppress you, or hog-tie you. But you’re in this world. Don’t hurt each other. Take care of yourselves. Have regard for the gift of your own human life. Have regard and respect for the lives of others.’” He says he has a general approach to life that he cribbed from a book of philosophy by Sam Harris: “Always tell the truth. Don’t even go, ‘Hey! I love your sweater!’ Or don’t go backstage and say, ‘You were great, you were spectacular!’ Graciousness and elegance demand that sometimes you need to not tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time, to everybody. You have to honour kindness over cruelty and be sensitive to somebody’s feelings. But don’t lie.” […]
You’re tactile, I say to Goldblum. Is it that you think you need to feel things to understand things?
“Probably so. Human beings do. I like to. I’m glad I have my vision. I certainly like to hear. Smelling is very important to me. I’m a big taster. And then last, I believe, is … Yes, I like how things feel. I do like to feel things.”
— Tom Lamont, excerpts from an interview with Jeff Goldblum titled “‘It’s foolish to mask your age. Accept it. Present it’: Jeff Goldblum on vanity, mortality and becoming a father in his 60s.” (The Guardian, August 3, 2024)
Photograph: Jeff Goldblum (71) with his wife Emilie Livingston and their two sons, Charlie and River. (Photo by David Vintiner/The Guardian)
