Bruce Dern in line for Oscar with his star turn in Nebraska

IT may be late in his career, but 77-year-old Bruce Dern’s Oscar-nominated turn in Nebraska has set tongues wagging.

Dern and director Alexander Payne on the set of Nebraska.

BRUCE Dern has plenty to talk about. But as the 77-year-old enjoys a late bud of recognition, including an Academy Award nomination, for his lead role in Nebraska, he’s just as animated talking about athletics as the movies.

And it’s not reminiscing about past glories as a high-school runner who was aiming to make the American Olympics team. No, it’s merely an appreciation he’s talking to an Australian and can revel in memories of Herb Elliott (the toughest runner he competed against), Ron Clarke (”the greatest, most unfortunate, tragic story in Olympic history) and other former peers.

I have to try hard to bring Dern back from his sporting memories - “between [Elliott] and Phar Lap, you have to be a fan of Australian athleticism”- to the enjoyment of his late career glow.

“It’s a fun time in my life, I’ll tell ya that. You know the luckiest thing for me was just being able to get the part,” he says of Nebraska, which he and his producers have “looked at like the little engine that could”.

Alexander Payne isn’t exactly a driver of little engines, although he is unlikely to drive the kind of film that powers a studio’s box office. But he makes reliable American comedy dramas and has barely put a foot wrong. He adds Nebraska to an increasingly daunting list of middle-American films: Election, About Schmidt, Sideways and The Descendants.

Nebraska is the most humble of the lot, a tale of an addled old man, Dern’s Woody, who wants to head from Montana to Nebraska to pick up the million dollars he believes he’s won in a non-existent sweepstakes.

His son (Saturday Night Live’s Will Forte) reluctantly agrees to drive him across state, if only to keep his dad occupied and give him a little joy.

The film is not about Nebraska, but a state of mind. It is filmed in black and white and has accumulated six Academy Award nominations, including a best motion picture nod and Dern’s lead actor nomination. Nebraska is the little engine that could.

Yet it was an ongoing frustration for Dern. He was always the second or third banana during his peak in the 1970s, an actor who could be relied on to deliver the perfect villain or crazy guy, but wasn’t banked on to deliver the lead role.

He has had a storied, enjoyable ride through Hollywood: as Tom Buchanan in 1974’s The Great Gatsby, crashing a blimp into the Super Bowl (Black Sunday), earning a supporting actor Oscar nomination (1978’s Coming Home) or, notoriously, killing John Wayne (in The Cowboys). Though, as with most actors who don’t have their name above the film’s title, he had a moment and slowly drifted off screen.

Payne sent him the Nebraska script in 2004 and asked him what he thought. Dern liked it and bought the director a little present to tell him he was ready.

Only nine years later did they make it. That must have been frustrating for an actor then in his late 60s?

Dern says it was “tough” because sending the script did not constitute an offer. “So you know that you’re in the mix, but you know also that you might also be the first person to see it because he’s not meant to send it out to eight people at one time,” he says. “So that was very nice.”

Then Payne made his wine road movie starring Paul Giamatti, Sideways, and the Hawaiian comedic drama with George Clooney, The Descendants. Both earned multiple Oscar nominations and Payne earned two Oscars for his screenplays (Bob Nelson wrote Nebraska and is nominated this year).

“I just thought maybe the movie would never get made,” Dern recalls of Payne’s flights. He also appreciated “the more I got to know Alexander the more I understood if he could not make it in black and white, then he would not do it”.

So the prognosis was not good. But Payne finally came knocking and Dern had some ready advisers to consult about the director. His daughter Laura, who starred in Payne’s first feature, Citizen Ruth (1996), and his good friend, About Schmidt’s Jack Nicholson.

“The first person I called was Laura and I asked what am I getting with Alexander Payne?” Dern says. “And she said ‘Believe him, love him, trust him’.”

“And I called Nicholson and he said to me” - and here Dern affects his best Jack snarl - “ ‘Dern, you’re going to get the best partner you’ve had in your entire career. And you’re also going to get a guy who’s going to go diva on you one hour a week.’ “

Dern laughs, saying he didn’t see the diva.

“When somebody says to you, the very first day at the movie before you’ve been on film yet: ‘Don’t show me anything, let me find it’; when he said that to me I knew I was in the perfect position for the first time in my career.” The actor was reassured: “I didn’t need to perform, I just needed to be.”

Payne clearly inspires trust. Forty-five of his 87 crew members on Nebraska have worked on every day of every movie he’s ever made.

The actor explains the role of Woody is unlike any role he’s had before. It was revelatory because he dropped his flourishes and was allowed to show the quiet side of his personality for the first time.

He inhabits Woody in a way that makes the viewer believe he’s not really acting. Yet, in the most obvious sense, Dern is anything but the confused, creaky, alcoholic Woody. Dern is a teetotaller, former athlete and sparkling in conversation.

It is quite the transformation. Dern recently began a business called Publicly Private.

“And I’ve always felt that’s what acting is, to have the ability once they turn the switch on or roll cameras or whatever you want to call it, to start with your heart and expose that,” he says. “And expose it to the public. If you can do that and you can get a few people in front of the camera and behind the camera to do that at the same time, you just might end up doing something. And that’s what happened here.”

He concedes he’s been in too many roles where his character spoke too much to ensure the characters have more value throughout the movie “because the parts aren’t fully dimensional”.

“With Woody, the challenges were the brokenness of the physicality of the guy, the detachment and the fact that he does not verbally reply to anything,” he says. “And it’s not that he keeps it to himself. My feeling is people that are reaching that age - and I’m 77 - is they don’t go to specific places when they drift. They just drift. And then they try to get a nap between drifts.”

Woody has one goal and that gives him something to live for. “Woody doesn’t know he’s looking for anything else, he just knows he got something in the mail that’s the truth,” Dern says. “And anybody who tells him it’s not the truth is wrong because on television and the radio, or through the mail, if you say something and say it’s true and you’re giving people money, it’s got to be true because you’re not allowed to do otherwise.”

The character is both lovable and a frustration. Dern says he’s heard every kind of audience response to him. “At least they’re not reacting to him the way they reacted to me when I killed John Wayne, for chrissake!”

“[But] there’s one thing you can do for the Woodys in your life,” he adds. “And that is every now and then, no matter how tough it is for ya, give them a hug. And tell them something you really mean. And don’t wait until it’s too late because if you don’t say it, you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life. And that’s what I like most about the movie.”

Nebraska opens nationally on Thursday.