Jeremy Allen White opens up about what it was really like to take on the daunting task of playing Bruce Springsteen in the biopic. Springsteen: Deliver me from nothing.
Speaking at the 2025 Gotham Awards in New York City, the actor admitted that the role carried more weight than he expected.
“It was tremendous pressure,” he said. Page sixand explained that portraying a living legend during such a crucial chapter in his life was both exciting and overwhelming.
Fortunately, White was not left alone.
He revealed that Springsteen remained closely involved during filming, offering him reassurance almost daily.
“Bruce texted me almost every night,” she 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 plays Springsteen on the verge of international fame, while still struggling with the realities of where he comes 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 honored together at the Gotham Awards with the Cultural Icon Tribute Award.
In accepting the recognition, White thanked Springsteen for trusting them with a chapter of his life that he had never publicly explored.
“We are very grateful that Bruce allowed us to enter [his] space. And to tell a story that he had never told himself and had never mythologized,” he said, stumbling on “mythologized” before laughing with, “Sorry folks, I’m so tired,” prompting warm laughter in the star-studded room.
The moment captured exactly what White described throughout the night: the pressure, gratitude and deeply human experience of stepping into the shoes of someone as influential as Bruce Springsteen.
