Bruce Dern spends most of Nebraska chasing a million-dollar prize, but the acting veteran felt he hit the jackpot just getting the part.
Ten years ago director Alexander Payne of The Descendants fame sent the screenplay by Bob Nelson to Dern, not with an offer to play the lead role of Woody, but merely to get his thoughts.
"My opinion was ... `I think I'm Woody'," Dern tells AAP. He left a letter at Payne's office saying as much. And waited. And waited.
Payne went off to make Sideways and The Descendants and win Academy Awards, but nothing had come of Nebraska - the tale of an ageing father who's convinced he's a million-dollar sweepstakes winner and goes on a road trip with his son to claim his prize.
Dern recalls Payne saying he had always envisaged Henry Fonda in the part. The director also tried to get Gene Hackman involved, but it wasn't enough to bring him out of retirement.
Dern says he was in the right place at the right time.
"The biggest, most exciting thing for me on this whole trip, no matter how it turns out, he gave me the goddamn part," Dern says.
"That's the excitement.
"And when Alex Payne comes down to give you a part, it's like when I first began, you begged to work for Mr Kazan (directed, amongst others, A Streetcar Named Desire), and then if you were lucky, you begged to work for Mr Hitchcock and then if you were lucky, you begged to work for Alex Payne or Quentin Tarantino."
Dern, who has worked with all of those directors, is happy in the end that there was a decade break. He thinks he's much better suited to the role now.
"There's a difference between 67 and 77, particularly in the condition of the body. My face, I guess I look like I've been through the Boer War 100 times," he says.
"I don't know what I look like but I certainly think I look older."
And now finally, after more than 80 feature films and years of supporting parts, including his famous role in The Cowboys as the villain who gunned down John Wayne, Dern is in the spotlight.
Not just in a rare starring role, but an Academy Award nominated one that many critics are touting as a career best.
Not that he's all that fazed by Oscar buzz.
In the lead-up to the nominations announcement, Dern says he wasn't too aware of it. He just wants to get as many people to see their "little engine that could" film.
"If that kind of recognition helps the movie, fine, but I don't deal with it on that level," he says.
And despite nabbing the lead role, Dern, a hard-working character actor, was always more concerned about immersing himself in the part of Woody.
"Jimmy Dean never thought of himself as the star of a movie, I don't think Marlon Brando did, I don't think Montgomery Clift did and those were the forerunners to my generation," he says.
"It's about really understanding what you came into the business in the first place for."
* Nebraska is released in Australian cinemas on February 20.
