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Bruce Springsteen confided in Jeremy Allen White about suffering a panic attack.
The Bear actor plays The Boss new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere and he’s revealed the music legend talked openly about his past as he was preparing for the role – and Springsteen’s candid confessions really helped him get into the character.
Speaking to PEOPLE at the New York Film Festival screening of the movie, White explained: “[I asked him] ‘Why this film? Why this period?’
“And even what happened on this journey, on this road trip, in really specific moments. And he was immediately so honest.
“He talked to me about a panic attack he’d had, and he described it to me as in this moment he felt like he was like a voyeur in his own life.
“He was an observer. He felt so outside of himself, and he told me that story, and that’s a feeling I’m familiar with.”
The actor added: “I think I’m always trying to find some presence in my own life, and I worked very hard at it every day.
“And when he told me that story and made me familiar with that feeling, I knew there was a tether that I could explore there.”
The film tells the story of Springsteen’s return to his hometown in New Jersey as he was making his 1982 album Nebraska, and the 75-year-old musician admitted he’s grateful to White for doing such a good job.
Speaking on stage at the premiere, The Boss said: “I want to thank everybody for coming out to see our film tonight and our crew, a great cast.
“Jeremy Allen White for putting his whole heart and soul into the part, just such a wonderful job, and for playing a much better looking version of me.
“I’m really thankful for that.”
It comes after Springsteen confessed he agreed to make Deliver Me From Nowhere because it felt like an “anti-biopic”, joking that he gave writer-and-director Scott Cooper the green light for the project because he’s “old ” and “doesn’t give a f***” anymore.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Telluride Film Festival, he said: “What brought this one along “was that I think we had a very specific idea – Scott had a very specific idea, particularly, of what we were gonna attempt to do.
“And, for lack of a better word, it was an anti-biopic. You know, it’s really not a biopic – it just takes a couple years out of my life when I was 31 and 32 and looks at them really at a time when I made this particular record, and when I went through some just difficult places in my life, you know.
“And, I’m old and I don’t give a f*** what I do now.”
Despite White’s lack of musical background before filming, the director knew he was the right choice.
He explained during the discussion: “[Jeremy had] an intensity of vulnerability and authenticity that I saw in Bruce’s work and in archival interviews with Bruce … Jeremy has two things that really, for me, make up Bruce Springsteen, and one is humility. And the other is swagger.”
Bruce quipped: “That’s half-right.”
The Born to Run singer also spoke touchingly of having attended the very first screening of the film at the festival with his sister Pamela, who is seen as a child in a number of flashback scenes in Deliver Me From Nowhere.
He said: “I got to watch the film with my one-year-younger sister who is just a little blonde girl on the film, but it was actually a little brown, short-haired girl.
“But she sat there with me and we watched the film and she held onto my hand, and at the end of it, she turns to me and says, ‘Isn’t it wonderful we have this?'”
