Bruce Springsteen had nothing but good things to say about Jeremy Allen White at a screening of Deliver Me From Nowhere at the New York Film Festival.
The Boss took the stage following the showing of the biopic that details his struggle with depression while crafting his acclaimed 1982 acoustic album Nebraska.
Bruce Springsteen, 76, publicly praised the award-winning star of The Bear for ‘playing a much better looking version of me.’
He went on to say: ‘I spent my life on the road, moving around the world as kind of a musical ambassador for America, you know … trying to measure the distance between American reality, where we’ve often fallen short of our ideals.
‘But for a lot of folks out there, she continues to be a land of hope and dreams, not of fear or divisiveness or government censorship or hatred.’
The legendary rocker then performed a moving version of Land Of Hope And Dreams to a standing ovation, according to Deadline.
The movie is directed by Scott Cooper and also features Succession star Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s longtime manager and co-producer Jon Landau.
Springsteen told TIME on Thursday he felt the film’s director Scott Cooper – who penned the biopic based on Warren Zanes’ book – had a daunting task in depicting his battle with depression on the silver screen.
The film ‘could have gone in a lot of different directions’ in terms of his depression battles, he shared.
Bruce Springsteen said he had thought of taking his own life in 1982 after his album Nebraska was released, though his manager Landau intervened and suggested he get ‘professional help.’
The advice ‘was and has been a total life changer,’ Springsteen told TIME.
Director Cooper told the outlet of the timing of the motion picture: ‘This narrow time frame reveals deeper truths about Bruce’s lifelong struggles with identity and creative honesty.’
In the chat with TIME, Springsteen explained why he’s never strayed too far from his New Jersey beginnings.
‘What I worked very hard on was not running, but on standing, on making your life choices, and then standing with and for them,’ he said. ‘That’s been my theme since that record.’
Stephen Graham, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron and Johnny Cannizzaro round out an impressive ensemble cast.
Deliver Me From Nowhere arrives in theaters October 24.