Performer Jeff Goldblum is 70

Brown Shoe

Jeff GoldblumI’ve been following the quirky career of Jeff Goldblum for a very long time. While I saw him in early films such as California Split (1974), Nashville (1975), and Annie Hall (1977), I think I first really knew who he was in the remake of The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978).

I may have been one of the 14 people who watched Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980), in which “a con-man [Ben Vereen] and an accountant-wanna-be private eye [Goldblum] team up to fight crime.” It didn’t catch on despite being written by Stephen J. Cannell, the scribe of The Rockford Files and The Greatest American Hero.

He appeared in The Fly (1986) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) with Geena Davis, his wife from 1987 to 1991. After playing Jeff Goldblum in The Player (1992), he appeared in one of his franchise films, Jurassic Park (1993). I’ve only seen that first film. However, I’ve read he’s one of the only reasons to see Jurassic World Dominion (2022).

Jake Coyle of the Associated Press wrote in June 2022 that the actor has not been defined by his roles in Jurassic Day or Independence Day. “It’s more that Goldblum, in putting his own idiosyncratic spin on them, marks the characters, rather than the other way around.”

TV cop

This is true in Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2009-2010), in which he played detective Zack Nichols for a season. His character, like the man himself, plays a bit of jazz piano. And then he reprieved the role in, of all things, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in the Civil Forfeiture episode (2014) at 14:07.

Goldblum was great as Deputy Kovacs in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). He also voiced Duke in the animated Isle of Dogs (2018).

I haven’t seen The World According to Jeff Goldblum, but I suspect it’d be entertaining. As Coyle noted: “Chaos and harmony feature prominently in most conversations with Goldblum, an ever-riffing, cosmetically attuned raconteur.” he shows up playing

Heck, even his commercials for  Apartments.com are a bit off-center. But he can also be serious, as this clip from Finding Your Roots shows.

Happy 70th birthday to Jeff Goldblum.

Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

One thought on “Performer Jeff Goldblum is 70”

  1. Oh wow! I may have to post later. The Wife and I are big Jeff Goldblum fans. He’s always a delight. We’ve been watching THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JEFF GOLDBLUM on DisneyPlus and it’s a great show; I really do recommend it. Each episode is only about 25 minutes, and they all focus on subjects you’d never have thought to watch a documentary about.

    We also remember a mid-season replacement show he did some years ago, called RAINES. It was very good–a noir police procedural–but sadly its ratings were terrible, so it came and went.

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