Fat and bald has become the on-screen image for Jeff Bridges as he prepares to bring a surfing penguin to the big screen while preparing to become a baddie in the mega-budget movie, Iron Man. Ben Falk talks to the Hollywood star about life on and off set.

JEFF Bridges is bald. A chrome dome. A slaphead. Which makes him rather difficult to distinguish, because one of the things that has made this four-time Oscar nominee a housewive's favourite is his long, flowing locks in movies like The Fabulous Baker Boys and The Fisher King.

In fact, it turns out that the star has shaved his noggin for an upcoming role, playing a baddie opposite Robert Downey Jr in comic book flick Iron Man, which also features the cinematic return of Gwyneth Paltrow. For the most part, Bridges covers up his chilly pate with a dashing fedora, joking: "It's a dirty trick. They told me 'We're all shaving our heads.'"

He's referring to the rest of the cast of new animated penguin flick Surf's Up, to which Bridges lends his lugubrious tones. He is The Geek, a chubby surfer dropout who becomes a mentor to young boarding wunderkind Cody (played by Transformers' Shia LaBoeuf).

"He's kind of a fat penguin," laughs the relaxed actor, whose demeanour bears more than a little resemblance to his titular character in The Big Lebowski. "I said, 'Can't you give him a little more tone?' I got kind of a kick out of it, though. It was kind of funny.

"You could say he's The Dude of penguins," he continues. "They both surf. They're both laidback. The penguin's into clams, The Dude does weed."

The flick has already been a smash hit at the US box office, despite coming hot on the heels of Happy Feet and March Of The Penguins. "When (Happy Feet) came out, it was not fear," he grins. "It was 'Aaaahhhhh!' Because there's an element of horseracing in making movies and you want your horse to do well."

Luckily, Surf's Up offers a unique take on the big screen cartoon format, framing the movie as a mockumentary following Cody as he competes in a world surfing contest. The concept includes interviews with the characters to camera, plenty of improvisation and cleverly doctored black and white scenes designed to resemble archive footage. "One of the things that was appealing to me about the whole project was this documentary quality," he says. "This Spinal Tap take on it all. Playing it pretty seriously and finding the humour in that."

And rather than stand alone in a voice booth like with most animated projects, the actors got a chance to record together. "(The film-makers) were always calling on you to use your imagination and bring whatever you had to the scene," he explains. "That's always the most fun in a regular movie when you have to rise to the occasion."

Rare is it that you find a celeb who appears to enjoy his work so much, but then Bridges has consistently bucked the typical Hollywood system, which initially tried to stereotype him as a cornball leading man. After appearing several times on screen as a toddler alongside his thespian dad, Lloyd, Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award for his first cinematic role, as an idiotic small town teenager in The Last Picture Show.

And while his happy-go-lucky smile and piercing blue eyes could have led to a lucrative career in romantic comedies, he embarked on one of Tinseltown's most varied and surprising careers.

He was nominated again, this time as Best Actor for 1984's Starman and has since tackled everything from whodunnit (Jagged Edge) to convincingly falling in love with Barbra Streisand in The Mirror Has Two Faces. "My father taught us to approach the work with a lot of joy and a lot of fun," he reveals. "That's how I like to work. Whenever I go off to work and I'll be kind of anxious, my wife will say 'Remember, have fun.' Sometimes we do forget."

Still, he admits, his success hasn't cooled his acting insecurity. "Fear is something that's always with you and you've got to befriend that and make that your buddy." The 57-year-old has been happily married to his (non-acting) wife for 30 years and the couple have three children. He amuses himself by taking photos on the set - many of which have been published in coffee table books - and playing the ukelele. "I do a lot of ceramics," he says. "My website is kind of fun for me too. I think I have another album in me. I'm getting my buddies together and collecting songs. I have a lot of family time these days. My oldest daughter Isabelle is getting married and we're all kind of gearing up for that."

Appearing in Surf's Up has also helped re-ignite the star's love of the ocean. "I stopped surfing about 30 years ago and I've picked it up in the last five years or so," he says. "I used to surf in high school and at one time I was pretty great and now I'm kind of back to getting my balance back and getting my turns down. It's a wonderful metaphor, catching a wave, for how you look at other challenges in your life."

Recently though, he's been having to swap rip curls for comic books for the mega-budget Iron Man, due out next summer. As the dazzlingly monikered Obadiah Stane, Bridges has been getting villainous in one of the few genres he's never ventured into. "It's not your typical superhero (movie)," he proffers almost apologetically, in his languid lilt that over the course of the interview becomes almost hypnotic. "It's about dealing with weapons manufacturers and the politics of the world."

The politics of the world according to The Dude. George Dubya and Gordon Brown should sit up and take notice.

* Surf's Up opens in cinemas on Friday and is reviewed on Page 1