Jazzy Jeff

He’s been a star for more than 30 years. Now JEFF GOLDBLUM, one of Hollywood’s most original actors, is dressed for a new kind of success

- Alex Bhattacharji

Science!” Jeff Goldblum exclaims, holding up a finger and surveying the crowd that has packed into Rockwell Table & Stage in Los Angeles to see him perform with his band, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. “Does anyone here work in, in, in the sciences?”

For Goldblum, who’s not a scientist but plays one in summer block busters—an MIT-educated, alien-hacking satellite tech in Independence Day; a mathematician and chaos theorist in Jurassic Park—this quest for knowledge is a parental imperative. “I have a 3-year-old and a 1-yearold,” he announces in his distinctive diction that is occasionally peppered with an oddly mellifluous stammer. “I want to pass on something besides my half-baked ideas.”

A young woman waves her arm and beams when Gold blum approaches, microphone in hand. “Now, you have some fun facts about science,” he asks her, “because you’re involved in the sciences of some kind?”

When the woman, a native of Australia, affirms that she’s an astrophysicist at Caltech, Goldblum’s eyes light up. “You look for planets around other stars,” he says, nodding. “You’ve found, you, you keep finding things, don’t you?”

“Well,” she says, “my fun fact was going to be that we know of 3,793 planets right now around other stars, and we’re adding five more at 10 a.m. tomorrow.”

“Hey, that’s breaking news,” he says. Rising to his full 6 foot 4, he shows off the full scope of his appropriately snazzy outfit: slim-fitting black-and-white tiger-striped pants from Isabel Marant and a silk Prada shirt printed with a panoply of zoo animals as well as unicorns and dinosaurs. “At 10 a.m. tomorrow there’s gonna be how many more? Five more? And are any of them going to be named after, um, your experience tonight?”