Jeremy Allen White Talked to Bruce Springsteen About Panic Attacks

Jeremy Allen White found an unexpected connection with Bruce Springsteen.

At the New York Film Festival premiere of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere on Sunday, Sept. 28, White, 34, opened up about how he first approached the film’s subject to shape his portrayal.

Early on in the process, White told PEOPLE he “asked Bruce really directly, ‘Why this film? Why this period?’ And even what happened on this journey, on this road trip in really specific moments. And he was immediately so honest.”

“He talked to me about a panic attack he’d had, and he described it to me as in this moment he felt like he was like a voyeur in his own life,” The Bear star said. “He was an observer. He felt so outside of himself, and he told me that story, and that’s a feeling I’m familiar with.”

“I think I’m always trying to find some presence in my own life, and I worked very hard at it every day,” White continued. “And when he told me that story and made me familiar with that feeling, I knew there was a tether that I could explore there.”

After the forthcoming biopic screened at NYFF, Springsteen, 76, performed “Land of Hope and Dreams,” but not before thanking everyone who worked on Deliver Me from Nowhere — including White.

“I want to thank everybody for coming out to see our film tonight and our crew, a great cast,” the rock legend told attendees. He then thanked White “for putting his whole heart and soul into the part — just such a wonderful job — and for playing a much better-looking version of me.”

Deliver Me from Nowhere “chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album when he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past,” per an official synopsis.

“Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, the album marked a pivotal time in his life and is considered one of his most enduring works—a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe.”

The “Born to Run” singer was very involved in the making of Deliver Me From Nowhere, giving input and visiting the set of the biopic multiple times in fall 2024 and early 2025.

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Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is in theaters Oct. 24.