Jeremy Allen White opens up about what it was really like to take on the massive task of playing Bruce Springsteen in the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Speaking at the 2025 Gotham Awards in New York City, the actor admitted that the role came with more weight than he expected.
“It was enormous pressure,” he said Page sixwho explains that it was both exciting and overwhelming to portray a living legend during such a pivotal chapter in his life.
Fortunately, White was not left to navigate alone.
He revealed that Springsteen remained closely involved throughout the shoot, offering reassurance almost daily.
“Bruce wrote me almost every night,” he said, adding that the musician was “on set very often.”
White joked that without those messages from the 76-year-old rock icon, he would have “cried a lot more” during the process.
In the film, White portrays Springsteen at the moment he is on the brink of international fame, while still struggling with the realities of where he came from.
The emotional push and pull is one of the film’s central themes—and one of the reasons director Scott Cooper thought the story was worth telling now.
White and Cooper were honored together at the Gotham Awards with the Cultural Icon Tribute Award.
While accepting the accolade, White thanked Springsteen for entrusting them with a chapter of his life he had never publicly explored.
“We are very grateful that Bruce allowed us in [his] space. And to tell a story he’d never told himself and never mythologized,” he said, stumbling over “mythologized” before chuckling, “Sorry guys, I’m very tired,” which drew warm laughter from the star-studded room.
The moment captured exactly what White described throughout the night, the pressure, the gratitude and the deeply human experience of stepping into the shoes of someone as influential as Bruce Springsteen.
