What does Jeff Goldblum have in common with Dr Ian Malcolm, the silver-tongued, occasionally bare-chested mathematician he’s been playing for almost three decades in the Jurassic Park movies? For a start, they wear the same boots. The 69-year-old actor waggles his feet out from under our breakfast table at the Sunset Tower in Hollywood so I can admire the Saint Laurents he brought along from the latest instalment, Jurassic World Dominion. ‘I’ve broken these in,’ he recalls telling the costume department, explaining why he was putting them out of a job. ‘It makes me feel a whole different way if they’re new. I think Malcolm is broken in. He has a broken-in, uh, body experience.’
The same could be said of Goldblum, supremely at ease with himself and cutting a rakish figure this morning in an all-black ensemble topped with a wide-brimmed felt hat and those chunky Jeff-brand Jacques Marie Mage glasses. Their similarities extend well beyond a shared wardrobe. In 1993’s Jurassic Park, Richard Attenborough’s Dr John Hammond affectionately described Malcolm as suffering from a ‘deplorable excess of personality’ and Goldblum similarly bubbles over with effervescent charisma. He greets waiters and fellow diners like old friends. Even the menu thrills him. ‘I’d say the huevos rancheros might be entertaining,’ he purrs, as if the eggs might leap off the plate and start tap dancing. ‘And I think not unhealthy! What else do I need? Do you have fresh squeezed orange juice? Pulpy, that’s what I like. Otherwise I’m opposed to it.’
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 