From a young age, Jeff Goldblum had an eye for clothes. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he wanted glasses like John Lennon’s and turtlenecks like the Rat Pack’s.

As a member of New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse studying under the legendary Sanford Meisner, he scoured vintage shops for Russian-style overcoats and aviator hats.

After his success in blockbusters like “Jurassic Park” and “Independence Day,” he went through a Japanese-denim phase and loved what he calls “I’ve-been-working-on-the-railroad-type vests.”

“I’ve swung wildly, and I’ve had a lot of bad ideas,” Goldblum said of his style on a recent Zoom. 

The 73-year-old wore a bespoke green shirt from Anto, a shirtmaker based near his Los Angeles home.

On his feet were light-green socks, and handmade shoes from Florence, where he lives part-time with his wife, Emilie Livingston, and their two sons. 

This month, he reprises his role as the Wizard of Oz in “Wicked: For Good,” the second installment of the film adaptation of the musical juggernaut. He insisted he’s not contracted by Universal Studios to only wear green on the press tour.

In the last decade the world has paid more attention to the actor’s off-screen style, which has evolved since he began working with stylist Andrew Vottero around 2014.

A silver-haired fixture on best-dressed lists, Goldblum often finishes his zany outfits with chunky black specs. He has collaborated with glasses label Jacques Marie Mage and formed a close relationship with Prada , walking its runway and appearing in a 2022 brand campaign.

Here, Goldblum, who regularly performs with his jazz band the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, talks cashmere, vegan Bolognese and handshakes.

Studying with Sandy Meisner was: a portal into my more-intense interest in clothing. Everything could be a key to finding a character, behavior and discovering who you are in the story – (for example) how the shoe felt and how it made you walk.

You don’t really see: a 1970s-style long shirt collar in stores. I had this green shirt I’m wearing made at Anto in Los Angeles. I have them in a bunch of flavors, including some with Western buttons. I’m thinking about getting one in orange.

I just read: James Kaplan’s two-part biography of Frank Sinatra, whose favorite colour was orange. I’ve always liked orange.

I like: that Marie Kondo book “Tidying Up.” In my youth, my family left me alone one day in the garage. It seemed messy to me. I started to throw everything away. I was sweating under my arms with excitement. I got a big kick out of it.

My kids: like to wear my band merchandise. They sometimes help me dress. I say, “Hey, pick out what I’m going to wear.”

I’ve had to get cozy with one or two: leather jackets for parts like Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic Park.” I have a Saint Laurent motorcycle jacket that I wore the other day that’s kind of tight. I like it a lot.

I probably wouldn’t want to wear: real fur. I’ve stopped eating animals except fish. It’s part health-wise from my nutritionist and part my own feeling about it.

My favourite meal is at: Craig’s in West Hollywood. My wife and I share a chopped salad, minus the cheese, to start. They have a spaghetti squash primavera with broccoli and a spicy tomato sauce. I get it with shrimp or vegan Bolognese.

I’ve always been hypersensitive to: certain fabrics, such as wool. I’ve recently accepted—what’s that wool called?—cashmere. I don’t like things that itch. And I don’t like tags in the back of my shirt. I use a professional seam ripper to cut out tags.

What drives me crazy are: printing machines and my phone, especially how it breaks down so often. I had to deal with that this morning.

My feet must be: comfy cozy. My wife, a ballet dancer, says we’re not really working unless our feet are bleeding. I can’t accept that. I really like these handmade shoes I had made in Florence. They’re the most comfortable ever.

Florence is: a jewel box of a city. I’ve found the people delightful and the quality of life great. There are so many artisans. My favourite hat is one I purchased at the Borsalino store. I don’t know any Italian. Just a word here or there.

I don’t want to get sick so I prefer: fist bumping to a handshake. My knuckles have hurt from a too-hard fist bump. So let’s fist bump gently. Let’s just fist touch.

I have to organise my: sock drawer. It’s in the research and development stage. I’m very into socks of one kind or another. I like to experiment with a colour, which is why I have a light green pair on now. For tight shoes, I like (thin) Pantherella socks . I like a shorter sock, too. Sometimes I make it look like it’s falling down.

For a while I had an aesthetic allergy to: cobalt blue. You’d see it on a lady’s blouse sometimes, and I would go, “That hurts! It’s too bright.” But yesterday, after going to the Dodgers game with my kids, I put on a Dodgers blue cobalt sock, and I was very happy. So I’m nothing if not changeable.

I love: pockets. I recently got a minty green chore coat by the Row that I really like. Its flap pockets are deep enough that things aren’t going to fall out. I’d never even heard the term “chore coat.” It carries my wallet, keys, maybe a Kleenex, a lozenge, a little pillbox with an aspirin and some hand sanitizer.

I never used: sunscreen. But my wife has got me using Sarah Chapman sunscreen , sometimes even tinted. I’ll use a Joanna Vargas serum of some kind. I’m not sure what it’s doing, but I put it on at night. I imitate Boris Karloff (in the “Frankenstein” films) and I make a joke with Emilie that I’m going to my laboratory to work on my new longevity theorem.

My acid-reflux man said: “Take care of your vocal cords.” So I’m off caffeine. I’ll have a Ryze mushroom coffee in the morning—a scoop with hot water and oat milk. Sometimes the kids will make me a decaf cappuccino with oat milk and a sprinkling of chocolate powder, and that is too delightful.

For many decades: I’ve been totally on the natch. I’ll have a sip of red wine if Emilie says it’s really fantastic, but I don’t want to get loopy.

I get the usual: seven or eight hours of sleep. I stopped wearing my Oura ring. I’d be in bed for 8 hours and it would go, “No, Jeff, let’s call it 5½ hours that you got.” It used to say, “You’re somewhat ready for the day,” and I’d say, “Go to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.” I threw the darn thing away. I go with how I feel.

When I wake up: I go through the little vestige of transcendental meditation I learned decades ago. I crack my bones and do this stretching routine that ends with my taking a tennis racket and going through the motion of a backhand, forehand and serve. Then I take a Centrum for Men multivitamin, play my piano and work out in our gym.

Early on I was: a lanky guy. Then I started lifting weights. I wanted to steer some of those roles that were a little nerdy—even those scientist parts—in a cooler direction.

Am I: nerdy or cool? Well, these days, according to some circles, the two have overlapped. At this point, who knows?

Serial entrepreneur and investor James Harold Webb has done careful investment and estate planning to pass down his wealth to his five children, their three spouses, and six grandchildren. He also got everyone together to write a family mission statement.

“The entire goal is to preserve the family and to preserve the wealth,” said Webb, 65 years old, whose ventures include buying and building 33 Orangetheory Fitness franchises in Texas that he sold to private equity.

The mission statement for his 16-person blended family: “Life is a gift that cannot be wasted. Family is the essence of that life and, as a family, we will work hard. We will play hard. We will live in the pursuit of knowledge. We will love our family unconditionally. We will give more than we take to ensure a better world.”

A family mission statement lays out principles and goals in a few sentences. The aim is to avoid the fighting that has destroyed fortunes and left relatives battling in court, or just make sure younger generations don’t squander the fortune.

Behind the trend is the extraordinary wealth creation in recent years and a boom in ​​family wealth and concierge services catering to it.

Sometimes known as a declaration of purpose or vision, mission statements aren’t legally binding. Some advisers embrace the statements as a way to increase a family’s chances of what they consider success, preserving their wealth for a century or more.

Advisers point to Gilded Age dynasties that have disappeared to warn about depleted fortunes and families that no longer are connected.

Wealth advisers like to reference a 2023 book written by Victor Haghani and James White, “The Missing Billionaires,” which notes how rare it is for great family fortunes to last beyond a few generations.

Some families opt for a more robust, legalistic document, called a constitution. For families that own businesses, constitutions can lay out what minimum requirements family members and their spouses must meet to be able to work at the business. To try to avoid drama later, they also can define who even counts as family, such as stepchildren.

Some family members put the mission statement on the back of their business cards or hang them, framed, on a wall at home.

“It’s going to be the family’s why. Why are we doing what we’re doing? Why are we making all this money?” said Shawn Barberis, whose firm, More Than Money 360, works with families including Webb’s to create mission statements and prepare the next generation for leadership. “Every family gets off the tracks a little bit and it can get them refocused.”

Webb was born to teenage parents in rural Mississippi. He says he is astonished that he has been able to create what he calls “generational wealth” for his family, including from a medical-imaging business he sold in 2017 for $94 million. He and his wife, Cathy, split their time between Frisco, Texas, and San José del Cabo, Mexico.

Webb and his wife, plus the children and their spouses, sat around a conference room at a Frisco hotel several years ago to come up with their mission statement at the encouragement of Barberis, with whom they’d started working several years after they got married.

With Barberis guiding the discussion, Webb and his family spent a few hours talking about what was important to them to brainstorm their mission statement.

Webb now kicks off his family’s annual meeting by reading the mission statement aloud and leading a discussion of whether it needs revision. Then, he updates the family on his finances and estate plans before they break for games and a meal.

The mission statement by itself isn’t enough to hold the family together long-term, Webb said. But, coupled with transparency and financial education, he figures his family has a shot at maintaining its wealth for generations.

At UBS , which has a big business advising wealthy families, Sarah Salomon, head of family advisory and philanthropy, and her team help families that typically are worth at least $50 million write mission statements.

They’ll often kick off discussions by handing each family member a pack of cards inscribed with words such as “curiosity,” “reliability” and “spirituality”—and asking them to choose the cards that resonate with them the most.

Advisers sometimes have family members look at a series of images and riff on what they see. A photo of redwood forests, said Elisa Shevlin Rizzo, head of family office advisory at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, has prompted themes of permanence and environmental stewardship.

“If we know one of our core values is stewardship and legacy, maybe we don’t use the trusts for current consumption to fund extravagant lifestyles,” Rizzo said.

Colorado vacation homes and luxurious Airbnbs in Utah are popular sites for brainstorming mission statements, Salomon said. She typically steers clients away from offices, preferring settings where family members can relax and reflect.

Doug Baumoel, whose Boston-based consulting firm, Continuity LLC, focuses on resolving conflict among family business owners, says values exercises work best when the values family members choose are ones they actually practice.

“Inevitably, the most difficult family member will choose ‘family harmony’ as their most important value,” he said.

As Sam Schmidt, 61, an investor in businesses for decades, simplified his interests in recent years, including by recently selling his IndyCar racing team to the McLaren motor-racing outfit, he wanted to gather his family in Las Vegas to discuss the family’s purpose.

Coming together to share and communicate, Schmidt said, was just as valuable as the end statement, if not more so. With a third-party facilitator, they came up with a mission.

It reads, in part, “Our mission is to preserve, grow and steward resources while prioritizing generosity so that we may invest in family through education, life enriching experiences, and quality time together.”

Schmidt also is trying to pass on financial advice to the next generation, naming family trusts different variations of DSTP, for “Don’t Spend the Principal.”

Some families’ rallying cries have been passed down like well-worn stories. Anya Paiz, 23, said her family’s mission statement is so ingrained it’s rarely discussed. Her take on it: Do good by doing well.

She grew up in the U.S. hearing the family lore about her great-grandfather, an orphan who started a grocery store in Guatemala in 1928 that his children turned into one of Central America’s leading supermarket chains—and later sold to Walmart .

Her grandfather’s philosophy was that the better he did, the more he would be able to provide for his family and community. Paiz said setting herself up to do well was part of the reason she emphasized education; she recently graduated from New York University.

These days, she sees her extended family at its annual reunion, which stretches from lunch to dinner at a relative’s home in Guatemala City.

With members flying in from the U.S., Switzerland and parts of Central America, the family in attendance numbered 103 last December, she recalled. Tags listed people’s names, their branch of the family and the generation they represent.

Rodolfo Paiz, Anya’s father and a family business consultant, said various branches of the family have evolved their own versions of the informal family mission statement. That can make sense as families change, he said.

“You can’t expect children of a sixth-generation family worth $200 million to go through the kind of cold and hunger and scarcity that their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents went through,” he said.