Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges perfect embodies Preston Tucker's wild vision, manic fits, and boundless charisma. This is perhaps a surprising performance given the roles that Bridges is best known for: as The Dude in The Big Lebowski, Duane Jackson in The Last Picture Show, and Otis Blake in Crazy Heart (for which he earned Best Actor at the 2009 Oscars). In all those roles, Bridges assumes a lackadaisical demeanor that practically flows from his easy smile. But here, we see Bridges inhabit a totally different type of character, one with limitless energy and a nervy quality to his movements that match the pacing of the film itself.
Martin Landau
Coppola selecting Martin Landau to play this role was something of a surprise to the people involved with the film at the time. Landau was known for his comic roles, namely as the lead in the Mission Impossible television series. But Coppola clearly remembered the dramatic potential Landau displayed in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and got him on board for a performance in Tucker that's so stunning it would earn Landau a Golden Globes nod. This kicked off a period of serious roles for Landau, including ones in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors and Tim Burton's Ed Wood.
Joan Allen
Joan Allen enjoyed a fruitful career with a number of Oscar nods since getting started in the 1980s, and was integral to Coppola's return to the good graces of Hollywood. She starred in his 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married, Coppola's first film that was a critical hit and did relatively well at the box office in a number of years. Perhaps this made her an easy choice for Preston Tucker's wife in Tucker.
Elias Koteas
Before embarking on a string of independent films by the likes of Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, and Terrence Malick that would establish him as an arthouse fixture, Koteas enjoyed a brief period of collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola. In addition to playing the young engineer Alex Tremulis in Tucker, Koteas appeared in Coppola's 1987 civil war drama Gardens of Stone.
Christian Slater
Christian Slater often catches flack for his seemingly never-ending string of roles where he's basically performing a Jack Nicholson impersonation, so perhaps it's fitting that Coppola at one point in time wanted Nicholson to play Preston Tucker. Ultimately, the film that Slater would perform his most iconic role was also released in 1988: Heathers. While Slater would dabble in the weirder side of Hollywood with films like 1992's True Romance, the trajectory of his career would ultimately pit him as the leading man in big budget films like Interview with the Vampire.
Lloyd Bridges
In a bit of inspired casting, Coppola cast Jeff Bridges' father Lloyd as Preston Tucker’s nemesis, Sen. Homer Ferguson. The elder Bridges enjoyed a rich career in the Classical Hollywood days and was briefly blacklisted in Hollywood during Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist trail of fire.
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell has enjoyed a career as a serious actor in both smaller-budget art films and big-budget Hollywood fare. Cinephiles will most fondly remember him for turns in Wim Wenders's 1984 film Paris, Texas and David Lynch's 1986 classic Blue Velvet. Here, he makes a cameo as Howard Hughes, sinking perfectly into the shadowy role in a way that really only Stockwell could.
