At seventy, Bruce Dern’s legs aren’t as sturdy as they were when he ran cross-country races at the University of Pennsylvania and, after that, made more than 100 film and television appearances.
“I’m a pathetic, broken-down runner,” he grumbles during an interview at a seaside house in Chatham that’s being used as a pit stop by the cast and crew of the movie “Chatham.”
Dern plays Captain Perez in “Chatham,” a romantic comedy set on the Cape in 1905. Spend even a short while with Dern, and you see that the edginess, energy and intelligence that have earned him the reputation as one of Hollywood’s finest actors is still there.
He remains active in film (he appears in “The Astronaut Farmer,” which is in theaters now) and television (he plays “a-hole Frank,” as he puts it, father to Bill Paxton’s character on the HBO series “Big Love”).
Dern has written a book on his life, with co-authors Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer, called “Things I Have Said But Probably Shouldn’t Have – An Unrepentant Memoir.” Spiced with anecdotes about the stars he’s worked with over his fifty-year career, it’s due for release by John Wiley and Sons this month.
The actor claims he holds no punches – or real names – in his book. Family members and Hollywood stars receive the same treatment, he says.
Clad in a light-blue work shirt, chinos and hiking boots, Dern spins yarns about his past, Hollywood experiences and the filming of “Chatham.” He has an ironclad memory for details and dates, and each tale is sprinkled with a bit of irreverence and salty language.
Dern’s grandfather, George Dern, was the first non-Mormon governor of Utah and was secretary of war under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Also among Dern’s clan is his uncle, the poet Archibald MacLeish. Dern grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and attended New Trier High School, an elite school that spawned twelve other film actors of his generation, including Ann-Margaret, Ralph Bellamy, Rock Hudson and Charleton Heston. Donald Rumsfeld was president of the senior class when he was a freshman, Dern says.
“It was a high school of overachievers,” he says, as well as plenty of privileged and prejudiced people. “We all left running and screaming. There were a lot of wealthy people who were tough on other kinds of folks,” he says.
Dern also has a chapter in the book devoted to “great dames” he has worked with, including Jane Fonda (“probably the most energetic, alive woman I’ve ever known”) and Mia Farrow.
He calls “Miss Elizabeth” (Taylor) the last living screen legend. The male counterpart, he says, is “probably Gregory Peck.”
Dern left college in his junior year and got into acting because “it was a medium where people were touching me” emotionally.
His next film project will bring him together with his daughter, actress Laura Dern, and her mother and his former wife, Diane Ladd.
They are the only mother, father and daughter to have each earned Academy Award nominations, he says.
The film, “Hearts Location,” is about a family torn apart after the father leaves when the daughter is three. The daughter decides to track him down thirty-five years later when she is struggling with “a heap of trouble,” he says.
Written by Ashley Reed, Dern says it is “the best screenplay I ever read.”
As for “Chatham,” Dern says, he signed on because he is “a ‘passionist’ for opera” and he appreciates Dan Adams’ grand effort to make the film.
He calls Adams “a dreamer, who is literally making a movie on his street.”
“The guy has an enormous heart – it’s in the script and it’s on the screen.”
The screenplay is “a wonderful story,” he says, and “if we all do our jobs right and the crew does its job right, we have a chance to catch lightning in a bottle.”
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