Bruce Springsteen

1949-present

Latest News: Bruce Springsteen Talks Deliver Me from Nowhere

Bruce Springsteen is finally getting the movie treatment. The Grammy-winning rock star is portrayed by Jeremy Allen White in the upcoming biopic Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which chronicles the making of his 1982 album Nebraska.

Springsteen was actively involved in the film behind the scenes, giving notes on the script and frequently visiting set. The Boss told Rolling Stone in June that White was “very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on the set,” adding that the project rehashes “some of the most painful days of my life.”

The music legend was suffering from a bout of depression when he wrote and recorded Nebraska from his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. At the time, Springsteen was struggling to reconcile his newfound stardom with the hardships of his childhood.

Speaking at a Q&A at Spotify's London headquarters in October, the 76-year-old revealed that Deliver Me from Nowhere is not like most biopics of musicians, referring to the film as “more of a character-driven drama with music.” He also had not shortage of compliments for White, calling him a “rock star.”

“His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” Springsteen said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.”

Deliver Me from Nowhere arrives in theaters October 24.

Bruce Springsteen is a Grammy-winning musician known for such hits as “Born in the U.S.A,” “Glory Days,” and “Dancing in the Dark.” The rock star began his career by playing the bar circuit in New Jersey while assembling his famous E Street Band. His breakout 1975 record, Born to Run, united arena rock with human-size tales of working-class America. With dozens of awards under his belt, including 20 Grammys, and more than 65 million albums sold in the United States alone, Springsteen is one of the most successful musicians of all time. Also known for his left-leaning political causes, the artist was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016.

FULL NAME: Bruce Springsteen
BORN: September 23, 1949
BIRTHPLACE: Long Branch, New Jersey
SPOUSES: Julianne Phillips (1985-1989) and Patti Scialfa (1991-present)
CHILDREN: Evan James, Jessica Rae, and Samuel Ryan
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra

Born on September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen was raised in a working-class household in Freehold Borough. His father, Doug Springsteen, had trouble holding down a steady job and worked at different times as a bus driver, millworker, and prison guard. Bruce’s mother, Adele, brought in a steadier income as a secretary at a local insurance office.

Springsteen and his father had a difficult relationship. “When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house,” the singer later recalled. “One was me, and the other was my guitar.”

Years later, however, Springsteen suggested that his fraught relationship with his father had been important for his art. “I’ve gotta thank him,” Springsteen said upon his induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, “because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us? We would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs—and I tried it in the early ’90s, and it didn’t work… Anyway, I put on his work clothes, and I went to work. It was the way that I honored him. My parents’ experience forged my own. They shaped my politics, and they alerted me to what is at stake when you’re born in the U.S.A.”

Springsteen first fell in love with rock ’n’ roll when he saw Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. “[Elvis] was as big as the whole country itself,” Springsteen later remembered, “as big as the whole dream. He just embodied the essence of it, and he was in mortal combat with the thing. Nothing will ever take the place of that guy.” Inspired by Presley, he started taking guitar lessons at 7 years old but quickly gave up after finding it too difficult.

An outsider and recluse in school, Springsteen frequently got in trouble at his Catholic elementary school. “In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged,” he said. “I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.” Several years later, he skipped his own high school graduation because he felt too uncomfortable to attend.

At age 13, Springsteen returned to music, buying his first acoustic guitar from a secondhand store for $18. He taught himself how to play by listening to music and observing local guitarists, quickly mastering the instrument. In 1964, Springsteen started performing in public for the first time with the band The Rogues at nearby venues. To further aid his passion, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar for his 16^th birthday—an act of love he later wrote about in the song “The Wish.” The following year, he fronted the garage rock band The Castiles.

In 1967, an 18-year-old Springsteen was drafted for military service in the Vietnam War. But, as he later told Rolling Stone in December 1984, the only thought in his head as he traveled to his induction was “I ain’t goin’.” Springsteen failed his physical, largely due to his deliberately “crazy” behavior and a concussion previously suffered in a motorcycle accident. Springsteen’s 4-F classification—unfit for military service—freed him from having to go to Vietnam and allowed him to pursue music full-time.

While Springsteen tried his hand at higher education, briefly attending Ocean County College, he dropped out at age 19. “I didn’t really fit in,” he explained to Rolling Stone. “I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus.”

By the late 1960s, Springsteen was spending most of his time in Asbury Park on the New Jersey Shore, playing in several different bands while he forged his unique sound and introduced audiences to the gravelly baritone voice that later became famous. In 1969, he joined the band Steel Mill, where he first met the musicians who would later form his E Street Band. Around this time, Springsteen also acquired his nickname, “The Boss,” because he had a habit of collecting money earned during shows and then distributing it evenly among his bandmates. The musician continued to perform with Steel Mill across the country for two years and even recorded three of his original songs with them, before branching out to explore a range of musical styles with other groups.

In 1972, Springsteen was signed to Columbia Records after auditioning for record producer John Hammond and started a new band to record his debut album. The band, which included Steel Mill members Vini Lopez, Danny Federici, and Steven Van Zandt, eventually became known as the E Street Band. “My recollection is we were on the bus one night trying to come up with a band name,” Springsteen recalled at an event at Monmouth University in February 2017. “(E Street Band) seemed pretty easy—it just had a nice ring to it.”

Springsteen released his first studio album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., in January 1973. The record included the song “Blinded by the Light,” which was later made popular by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The Boss soon followed up with his sophomore effort, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, that November. The album received mostly positive reviews from critics but did not perform well commercially at first. While it never charted, the track “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” later became a fan favorite, especially at Springsteen's concerts.

Early in his career, the singer-songwriter was compared to Bob Dylan due to his poetic lyrics and penchant for writing songs about the working class. Both artists also shared Hammond as a producer. But Springsteen didn't appreciate being compared to the folk rock musician. “I became self-conscious about the Dylan comparison, so I moved away from [that style of songwriting] quickly,” he said in an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in October 2020.

Springsteen soon leaned more heavily into rock and roll, leading him to release his breakout record Born to Run in August 1975. Peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart, the album received rave reviews and quickly propelled him to fame. Springsteen earned his first hit single with the title track “Born to Run,” which landed firmly in the Billboard Hot 100's Top 40. The record was also commercially successful, selling 700,000 copies in the U.S. by the end of the year. That October, the rock star was featured on the covers of both Time magazine and Newsweek in the same week—a feat no other musician had achieved before.

But Springsteen was soon mired in a legal battle with his manager and publisher Mike Appel. The musician sued Appel in July 1976 over his contract, which yielded Springsteen only a tenth of his income and zero publishing rights. After Appel, countersued, however, Springsteen was unable to record new music. In the interim, he toured extensively with the E Street Band and continued to write new songs.

Nearly a year later, the suit was settled in May 1977 after Appel agreed to give up a large portion of his publishing rights, and Springsteen was soon allowed back in the studio. After finding a new manager in music critic Jon Landau, the rocker released Darkness on The Edge of Town in December 1978. The record, which was decidedly more somber than Born to Run, featured the charting singles “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night.”

In 1979, Springsteen performed at the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden, which protested nuclear energy. His performance of the “Detroit Medley” later earned him his first Grammy Awards nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 1981.

After continuing to fine tune his sound, which would later come to be known as heartland rock, Springsteen dropped his next effort, The River, in October 1980. The album spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and spawned the Top 20 singles “Hungry Heart” and “Fade Away.” The River earned him another Grammy nod in the same category in 1982.

Springsteen soon set to work on Nebraska, which he wrote and recorded by himself on a four-track cassette recorder at his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. At the time, the musician was suffering from depression. “I just hit some sort of personal wall that I didn't even know was there,” he recalled to CBS News in July 2024. “It was my first real major depression where I realized, ‘Oh, I've got to do something about it.’” Springsteen initially intended the recording to be a demo for the E Street Band, but he ended up releasing Nebraska as an acoustic album in October 1982. The emotional album featured songs about blue collar workers, but didn't perform as well commercially as his previous work.

While The Boss was already famous, he transformed into a global superstar with the arrival of his seventh studio album, Born in the U.S.A., in June 1984. Spending an impressive seven weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart, the album juxtaposed an upbeat, arena-rock sound with more dark and poignant lyrics. The now-famous title track has often been mistaken as a patriotic anthem, but it was actually written as a commentary on the treatment of veterans who fought in the Vietnam War. “When you think about all the young men and women that died in Vietnam, and how many died since they’ve been back—surviving the war and coming back and not surviving—you have to think that, at the time, the country took advantage of their selflessness,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone following the record's release.

In addition to “Born in the U.S.A.,” the album featured the singles “Dancing in the Dark,” “Cover Me,” “Glory Days,” “My Hometown,”—all of which landed in the top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100 chart. In 1985, Born in the U.S.A received multiple Grammy nominations, including for Album of the Year. At the 23rd awards ceremony that February, Springsteen won his first Grammy, taking home the trophy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for “Dancing in the Dark.” The following year, he earned a nod for Record of the Year for the title track. Born in the U.S.A remains his best-selling record to album with more than 30 million copies sold worldwide.

Springsteen went on to release several more records, continuing to experiment with different genres. He also took his talents to the big screen, writing and performing the emotional song “Streets of Philadelphia” for the 1993 legal drama Philadelphia. The following year, the track won Springsteen his first Academy Award, taking home the Oscar for Best Original Song. It also won Song of the Year, Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Best Rock Song, and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the 1995 Grammy Awards. The Boss was soon nominated for another Oscar that year for his song “Dead Man Walkin'” which was featured in the 1995 crime drama Dead Man Walking.

Springsteen returned to his folk rock roots with the release of The Ghost of Tom Joad in November 1995, which later won Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1997—his first win in an album category. Two years later, in 1999, The Boss was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He followed up this success with 2002's The Rising, which won Best Rock Album at the 2003 Grammys. To date, Springsteen has won a total of 20 Grammy Awards.

A testament to his lasting popularity, Springsteen became the first artist to have a top-five album in six different decades with the 2020 release of Letter to You. Four years later, he and The E Street Band were the subject of the 2024 movie Road Diary, which documented their preparation ahead of the group’s 2023-24 world tour.

Bruce Springsteen performs during his Born in the USA Tour in 1985.

Ever since he rose to fame in with his popular single “Born to Run” in 1975, Springsteen has delivered countless hits. The rock star has had a total of 37 songs land of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including 12 songs in the top 10. His 1980 single “Hungry Heart” was his first song to reach the top 10, peaking at No. 5. Springsteen scored his highest-charting song with the Grammy-winning “Dancing in the Dark” in 1984, which debuted at No. 2. This was soon followed by “Cover Me” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” peaking at No. 7 and No. 9 respectively.

Some of Springsteen's other popular songs include “Glory Days,” “I’m on Fire,” “Tunnel of Love,” “My Hometown,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “I'm Goin' Down,” “War,” and “Streets of Philadelphia.”

Springsteen's first studio album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., was released to much success in 1973 and has since achieved multi-platinum status, like many of his records. Throughout out his career, The Boss has had 12 studio records go platinum, including his best-selling record, 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., which has sold 30 million copies worldwide. Other top-selling studio albums include Born to Run (1975), The River (1980), and Tunnel of Love (1987), as well as the live album Live/1975-85 (1986).

In 2017, Springsteen made his Broadway debut in Springsteen on Broadway. Held at the Walter Kerr Theatre, the solo effort featured the artist performing some of his hits and sharing stories of his influences and formative years. After receiving a special Tony Award in June 2018, presented by Billy Joel, Springsteen closed out his show at the end of the year.

The following summer, Springsteen’s music was the focal point of the movie Blinded by the Light, about a British teenager of Pakistani descent who draws inspiration from the working-class yearnings of The Boss. According to director Gurinder Chadha, Springsteen expressed his appreciation of the film after a screening, saying, “Thank you for looking after me so beautifully.”

As of October 2025, Springsteen has an estimated net worth of $750 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

His net worth was boosted greatly in December 2021, when Springsteen sold his music catalog to Sony for an estimated $550 million—including separate deals for his recorded work and his songwriting rights. Sony owns the Columbia record label under which the singer worked throughout his career. “During the last 50 years, the men and women of Sony Music have treated me with the greatest respect as an artist and as a person. I’m thrilled that my legacy will continue to be cared for by the company and people I know and trust,” the singer said at the time in a statement.

Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen married in 1991 and have three children.

After the whirlwind of commercial success that followed Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen met and married actor Julianne Phillips in 1985. The marriage quickly began to fall apart, however, and Springsteen began an affair with E Street Band backup singer Patti Scialfa, who shared his working-class New Jersey background. Phillips filed for divorce in 1989.

Springsteen moved in with Scialfa, and they had two children—a son named Evan and a daughter named Jessica—together before officially marrying in 1991. Their third child and younger son, Samuel, was born in 1994.

Jessica is a professional equestrian who began riding horses on the family’s farm in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey. She competed for Team USA at the 2020 Olympics—postponed to the following year because of the COVID-19 pandemic—and won a silver medal in the team jumping competition.

Samuel—a firefighter for Jersey City, New Jersey—and his partner welcomed a daughter, Lily Harper Springsteen, in 2022, making Bruce and Patti grandparents for the first time.

Springsteen’s liberal politics became more pronounced as he became a strong backer of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. When Obama won the election, “The Rising” was the first song played at the victory party, and Springsteen went on to open the show at Obama’s inaugural celebration.

Honoring Springsteen at the Kennedy Center in 2009, Obama said, “I may be the President, but he is The Boss.” Springsteen campaigned for Obama’s reelection in 2012, and the president later named the music icon a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. Springsteen also performed at a prime-time virtual celebration for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in 2021, playing “Land of Hope and Dreams.” In 2024, he campaigned for Kamala Harris's presidential bid and performed at two of her rallies in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The Boss is the subject of the 2025 biopic Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, about Springsteen and the making of his 1982 album Nebraska. Emmy-winning actor Jeremy Allen White portrays the legendary musician, while Jeremy Strong plays his manager, Jon Landau.

Springsteen himself was actively involved in the behind the scenes, giving notes on the script and making frequent visits to the set. In an interview with Sirius XM's E Street Radio in January, he praised White's performance. “He’s got an interpretation of me that I think the fans will deeply recognize and he’s just done a great job,” Springsteen said. “He sings very well.”

Deliver Me from Nowhere arrives in theaters in October 2025.

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