Jeremy Allen White is opening 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 the role came with more weight than he had expected.
“It was a tremendous amount of pressure,” he told Page Six, explaining that portraying a living legend during such a pivotal chapter in his life was both exciting and overwhelming.
Fortunately, White wasn’t left to navigate it alone.
He revealed that Springsteen stayed closely involved throughout filming, offering reassurance almost daily.
“Bruce texted 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 been “crying a lot more” during the process.
In the film, White portrays Springsteen at the moment he’s on the verge of international fame, while still wrestling with the realities of where he came from.
That emotional push and pull is one of the film’s central themes — and one of the reasons director Scott Cooper felt the story was worth telling now.
White and Cooper were honoured together at the Gotham Awards with the Cultural Icon Tribute Award.
While accepting the recognition, White thanked Springsteen for trusting them with a chapter of his life he had never publicly explored.
“We’re very grateful that Bruce allowed us into [his] space. And to tell a story he had never told himself and never mythologized,” he said, stumbling over “mythologized” before laughing it off with, “Sorry folks, 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.
