James Bridges pelakon, penulis skrip, dan pengarah Amerika

James Bridges, (lahir 3 Februari 1936, Paris, Arkansas, AS - meninggal 6 Jun 1993, Los Angeles, California), pelakon Amerika, penulis skrip, dan pengarah yang terkenal dengan Sindrom China (1979) dan Urban Cowboy (1979) 1980).

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Bridges memulakan kariernya dalam bidang hiburan sebagai pelakon, dan kredit awal merangkumi bahagian kecil di sejumlah rancangan televisyen dan peranan utama sebagai Tarzan dalam filem bawah tanah Andy Warhol, Tarzan dan Jane Regained

Susunan (1964). Namun, dia akhirnya fokus bekerja di belakang kamera. Dia menulis kenderaan Marlon Brando yang diterima dengan baik The Appaloosa (1966), serta banyak episod The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Pada tahun 1970 Bridges menulis dan mengarahkan The Baby Maker, sebuah drama anggaran rendah mengenai pasangan tanpa anak yang menyewa hippie (dimainkan oleh Barbara Hershey) untuk berkhidmat sebagai ibu pengganti, dengan hasil yang tidak dijangka.

Yang lebih banyak dilihat ialah The Paper Chase (1973), sebuah drama mengenai seorang mahasiswa Harvard Law School (Timothy Bottoms) yang berjuang untuk bertahan dalam kesukaran dalam kerjanya dengan Profesor Kingsfield (John Houseman, yang memenangi Anugerah Akademi untuk peranannya)) semasa berpacaran dengan anak perempuan profesor yang bersemangat bebas (Lindsay Wagner). Adaptasi Bridges terhadap novel sumber juga dicalonkan untuk Oscar, dan filem popular itu kemudian diadaptasi menjadi siri televisyen yang berjaya.

Bridges next wrote and directed 9/30/55 (1978; also known as September 30, 1955), a dramatization of a fan (Richard Thomas) struggling to come to grips with the death of idol James Dean in 1955. However, it was the suspenseful The China Syndrome (1979) that became Bridges’s first breakout hit. Jane Fonda played a television reporter who stumbles onto a cover-up at a nuclear power plant that nearly suffered a meltdown, and Jack Lemmon portrayed the engineer who blows the whistle on his criminally negligent superiors. Both actors were Oscar-nominated, as was Bridges for cowriting the prescient original screenplay. The film received an enormous boost when, a few weeks after it opened, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Pennsylvania.

Bridges also scored big with Urban Cowboy (1980), a formulaic but entertaining story about a young Texas construction worker (John Travolta) who lets his marriage to independent Sissy (Debra Winger) disintegrate while he struggles to be accepted in the world of Gilley’s, the famed Houston honky-tonk, with its mechanical bull and competitive dance floors. Cowritten by Bridges, Urban Cowboy was a box office hit and spawned a best-selling sound track. Bridges next wrote the existential murder mystery Mike’s Murder for his longtime friend Winger, but the studio rejected the cut he delivered in 1982, and the film remained on the shelf until 1984, when a much-edited version was released to critical and commercial failure.

Bridges’s next film, Perfect (1985), centred on the new subculture of health clubs. It starred Travolta as a bright but unscrupulous Rolling Stone reporter on the trail of a story and Jamie Lee Curtis as the club instructor he first exploits, then falls in love with. Perfect, which was coscripted by Bridges, was widely panned and failed to find an audience. In 1988 he helmed his last film, Bright Lights, Big City, an intelligent but curiously flat adaptation of the Jay McInerney best seller about the club-and-cocaine scene in 1980s New York City. Two years later Clint Eastwood directed White Hunter, Black Heart, which was based on a script cowritten by Bridges. Diagnosed with cancer, Bridges died in 1993. In 1999 the main screening venue of the UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media was renamed the James Bridges Theater.