Jeff Bridges Wasn’t A Big Fan Of His De-Aged ‘Tron: Legacy’ Appearance: “I Looked More Like Bill Maher”

Jeff Bridges wasn’t too big a fan of his digitally altered appearance in 2010’s Tron: Legacy.

Speaking on a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, The Old Man actor delved into past projects like Iron Man and The Big Lebowski. As the conversation turned to the 1982 cyberpunk sci-fi pic and modern-day discussions of the role of artificial intelligence in film, Bridges said the Joseph Kosinski sequel featured a still “new” de-aging process via computer scanning — one he didn’t necessarily like.

“I wasn’t particularly fond of that recreation of myself,” he recalled, chuckling. “I thought I looked more like Bill Maher than myself.”

Looking back at Tron, the veteran actor explained that it was a concept that was “so bizarre” at the time, with the film using techniques like black-and-white photography to create its futuristic, neon digital world.

“It was shot in 70 millimeter black-and-white, hand-tinted by a bunch of ladies in Korea, I think,” he said. “We had black duvetyne, it was this set with white adhesive tape on the thing. Everybody was encouraged to wear colorful clothes ’cause … our suits were all black, but you would go outside after a day’s work of being in that black-and-white atmosphere and — boom! — color would just run into you.”

With Tron: Ares, starring Jared Leto and slated for release Oct. 10, 2025, Bridges will reprise his role as talented video game creator Kevin Flynn in a brief cameo. The Academy Award winner will return to the Disney-led universe as the follow-up traces Leto’s sophisticated program, Ares, sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with AI beings. Rounding out the cast are Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson.