When Jeff Bridges was offered the top job in "The Contender" by director Rod Lurie, he is said to have exclaimed, "The Dude as President? Who'd have ever thought it?" Who indeed. Here's an actor who's always working, always on the screen, and yet he's nobody's favourite actor of all time. This is a shame. Glancing over his CV is enough to remind you what an enormous amount of great work he's done.

The son of Lloyd Bridges, himself something of a nearly-man, and the younger brother of almost-famous Beau (who played alongside his brother in "The Fabulous Baker Boys" - Beau's best ever part), Jeff was born in Los Angeles in 1949, and attended a military academy. This is hard to reconcile with The Dude, his lovable hippy layabout character in the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski" a part which is apparently very close to the real Bridges.

His big break was in the remake of "King Kong", playing his first hippy, a photographer. Then he cut his hair for "Tron" in 1982, Disney's early display of computer graphics. Romantic leads, mostly husbands, followed, and John Carpenter's underrated man-who-fell-to-earth fantasy "Starman", but he was hip again as a DJ in "The Fisher King", and better for it.

In the 90s, Bridges appeared with his dad - for the first time since the 1950s TV show Sea Hunt - in the terrorist thriller "Blown Away", but the material was beneath him. Trust the Coens to elicit Jeff's best turn in 1998 as the bearded, cocktail-sipping, dressing-gown-wearing Dude. He should have been nominated for an Oscar, but, as usual, Jeff was overlooked. As the Dude would say, "Awww man!"

Antonia Quirke will be profiling Jeff Bridges in detail on this week's Back Row, plus Robert Rodriguez, Sue Perkins on girls fighting, and for Easter: portrayals of Jesus on the screen.

Andrew Collins presents Back Row on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 14th April at 5.30pm. You can listen to Back Row then, or Radio 4 at any time, using your computer.