Jeff Bridges Channels Waylon, Willie & Kris in 'Crazy Heart'

March 12, 2010 — -- In his new movie "Crazy Heart," Jeff Bridges plays an aging country music legend, soaked in bourbon and stumbling through his late-50s, his talent frayed and unwound by decades of abuse.

"Funny how falling feels like flying…for a little while," he sings.

The sharp, evocative line mirrors Bridges' soaring performance as Bad Blake, a late-stage alcoholic who seeks redemption and a second chance through an improbable love affair with a small-town reporter, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Blake is a music industry veteran, both burning out and fading away. He can't write songs like he used to and he's haunted by the outsized success of his young, former protégé, Tommy Sweet, played by Colin Farrell. Sweet, with his ponytail and earrings, represents a new era of commercially-successful country/pop stars.

Bridges' character, by contrast, is pale, pudgy, and constantly out of breath, wheezing as he lights each new cigarette with the dying ember of his last one, over and over, until you can feel your chest tighten.

But when he takes the stage, anywhere, even a bowling alley, the audience's reverence is palpable.

"That's his home turf, that stage,'' Bridges said in a recent interview for ABC News' "Popcorn With Peter Travers." "That's his throne, he can be totally at peace up there."

But the peace seems always short-lived.

"He's kind of hit the wall as far as the song thing. He feels he can't come up with a good song, and he wishes he was like Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan, one of these great guys, and that's probably the reason he drinks,'' he said. "He's pretty damn good. But [Dylan and Cohen are] in a class… you know, all by themselves."

As Blake works his way back from the bottom, a song slowly emerges from the mess of his life, which shapes and defines the movie.