Lloyd Vernet "Beau" Bridges III (born December 9, 1941) is an American actor and director. Bridges was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of actors Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson). He was nicknamed Beau by his parents after Ashley Wilkes' son in Gone with the Wind. His younger brother is actor Jeff Bridges, and he has a younger sister Lucinda. Another brother, Garrett, died in 1948 of sudden infant death syndrome. Beau has shared a close relationship with Jeff, to whom he acted as a surrogate father during childhood, when their father was busy with work. He and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. Wanting to become a basketball star, he played in his freshman year at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and later transferred to the University of Hawaii. In 1959, he enlisted in the US Coast Guard and also served for eight years in the Coast Guard Reserve. In 1949, Bridges played a secondary juvenile role in the movie The Red Pony. In the 1962–63 television season, Bridges, along with his brother, Jeff, appeared on their father's CBS anthology series, The Lloyd Bridges Show.