Over fifteen years ago, I really was a shitty actor!” Here is what Bradley Cooper said in 2019 in Interview. He, the handsome 47-year-old, twice nominated for the Oscar for best actor and whose first film as a director, A Star Is Born, brought in more than 385 million euros, a bad actor? This dear Bradley had undoubtedly decided to show false modesty on the day of the interview.
Neither cool nor handsome in high school
Unless the box office star is just lucid. Because if he is today courted by the greatest directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro or even a certain Clint Eastwood – who has made him one of his favorite actors in recent years – he does not has not always played in the big leagues. It was only at the dawn of his forties, ten years ago, with his role as a bipolar teacher opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Happiness Therapy, that he obtained Hollywood recognition. For a long time, the handsome boy was only a second dandruff knife. “I’m neither handsome enough nor ordinary enough to have big roles,” he even swore in Studio in 2015. The rest of his career fortunately proved him wrong, but he had to thwart a lot of clichés for that. Born on January 5, 1975 near Philadelphia, Bradley Charles Cooper is a happy child, who grows up with his sister Holly, pampered by his mother Gloria, a journalist, and his father Charles, a stockbroker. A decent student, he’s neither the prettiest in school nor the cool guy everyone adores. Brad is a normal little guy who plays basketball, rows and loves to cook. The only particularity: he dreams of becoming… a ninja and wishes to enroll in the military academy. His career plan falters in his early teens when his father takes him to see Elephant Man at the movies. It’s the click, he will be an actor. But dad Charles may be a cinephile, he is not enchanted by this vocation which promises a rather vague future for his offspring. Not one to rush into the stretchers, Bradley therefore won a license in English after attending the most highly rated private school in Philadelphia, Germantown Academy. At least, if he doesn’t manage to live from his passion, he can be a teacher. Because he may not be a rebel, but he’s not the type to let go of his dreams either. His parents end up accepting that he try his luck on the boards and in front of the cameras, but only if he pays for his lessons himself. Never mind, Bradley goes to New York to try his luck at the Actors Studio.
His career
2001-2006: ALIAS Noticed by Darren Star then by JJ Abrams, Bradley obtains the recurring role of Jennifer Garner’s confidant in the series, but there are only two seasons left.
2009: VERY BAD TRIPThe first part of this schoolboy comedy about difficult alcoholic tomorrows and their consequences is a global hit, the next two will be too.
2010: ALL RISKS AGENCY Bradley plays the big-bicep action hero in director Joe Carnahan’s adaptation of the hit TV series.
2012: HAPPINESS THERAPY Thanks to his role as a bipolar lost teacher, he proves that he is not only good at comedy and obtains an Oscar nomination, best actor category.
2014: AMERICAN SNIPERClint Eastwood chooses him to play sniper Chris Kyle. His interpretation will earn him a new selection for the Oscar for best actor.
2018: LA MULEBradley confirms his status as the great Clint Eastwood’s new favorite actor with this role of drug cop.
2018: A STAR IS BORN For the first time behind the camera and in front, Bradley plays a washed-up songwriter opposite a stunning Lady Gaga. It’s a global hit!
2021: LICORICE PIZZA Unrecognizable, Bradley plays the role of a slightly broken film producer in the superb film by Paul Thomas Anderson.
2022: NIGHTMARE ALLEYIn the new film by Guillermo del Toro Bradley embodies an illusionist, manipulative and ambitious medium, whose fate will change after an encounter.
One hell of a seducer!
If, as a teenager, Bradley was not the one who made all the girls crack in high school, he has since caught up well! The man has quite a hunting record but he only married once, with actress Jennifer Esposito. The marriage will end after four months, in 2007, and the beautiful brunette will evoke her ex in her autobiography Jennifer’s Way as a man “funny, intelligent, arrogant and a master in manipulation”. Then, the actor will fall for Renée Zellweger. Their story will only last a few years before the gentleman succumbs to the charms of Zoe Saldana, on a set. In 2013, the British model and actress Suki Waterhouse, seventeen years his junior, succeeded him but after two years of love, they separated. In April 2015, during the dinner of the correspondents of the White House, Bradley crosses the supermodel Irina Shayk, separated from Cristiano Ronaldo. Love at first sight, mutual, is immediate and their daughter Lea de Seine is born two years later. At the beginning of 2019, rumors of complicity with Lady Gaga undermine their couple. They end up separating at the beginning of the summer. Since then, it’s a heart to take…
Francophile at heart
In 1996, Bradley spent six months in Aix-en-Provence as part of a university exchange and he even revealed that he had fallen in love with a pretty French woman. The handsome kid speaks almost fluent French and he does not hesitate to use the language of Molière in an interview to prove it. In love with France, he did not choose the first name Lea de Seine for his daughter by chance. “I would like my children to study in Paris and I would love to have a house in the south of France”, he confided to Gala in 2013. It’s when he wants!
He passed the auditions and, to pay for his studies, he did odd jobs. A quarter of a century later, he never tires of recounting his first meeting with Leonardo DiCaprio when he was a porter in a chic hotel in the Big Apple. He didn’t know yet that, years later, he would no longer be carrying his suitcases but that he would be drinking with him at the Oscars after parties! In 1999, he got his first appearance on the small screen by stealing a kiss from Sarah Jessica Parker in an episode of Sex and the City. The TV opens its arms to him… or almost. The series in which he plays such as The Street, The Forces of Evil or Kitchen Confidential are inexorably canceled for lack of audience. Only Alias is a hit, but he will only play Sydney Bristow’s best friend for two seasons. Not serious: not only Bradley begins to be noticed but he won a friend for life on the set in the person of Jennifer Garner. Twenty years after their meeting, the two actors are still as close. He’s like that Bradley, friendly and reliable, the type to cheer you up when you’re feeling down. It was his roles as a boy next door – sometimes with a slightly light brain – in comedies that would make him famous. He chained them up to a certain Very Bad Trip, in 2009. There, his chocolate bars and his schoolboy stupidity (finally) hit the bull’s eye. In all, the alcoholic trilogy will bring in more than 1.3 billion euros worldwide. Bradley was voted the sexiest man in the world by People magazine in 2011, and he does not hesitate to take advantage of his status as a prized bachelor in Hollywood by seducing his colleagues like Renée Zellweger and Zoe Saldana. In short, Brad has everything to be happy… in appearance. This is his main problem: appearance. Behind his Ultra Brite smile and his good words, the thirty-year-old would like us to see his rough edges a little more, and for the cinema to exploit them. Because behind the scenes, everyday life is not so rosy. He struggled for years with alcoholism. One evening, after smashing his skull against a sidewalk, dead drunk, he ends his night of debauchery in a hospital bed. It’s the drop of whiskey that broke the camel’s back: he said stop. His will does the rest. He also wants to prove that he is capable of much more than just making people laugh and fantasize. He will do it, and with brilliance, gaining fifteen pounds to embody Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, and going on stage to play Joseph Merrick on Broadway in The Elephant Man, the story of the fi lm that made him want to make the cinema. The circle is complete ? She will be with A Star Is Born, which crowns years of attention to detail, light, framing, but also hours in the editing rooms after each of her shoots. Swept away the image of a pretty simpleton. Now, Bradley has nothing to prove. A star is born, and he intends to remain so! ¦
The sense of family
Perhaps not good at long love stories, Brad has two essential women in his life! The first is Gloria, his mother, whom he loves above all else. In 2011, when his father Charles died, he even returned to live with her in Los Angeles. He does not hesitate to bring him on the red carpets, especially at the Oscars, and it is rumored that he calls him several times a day when he is filming. And, since March 21, 2017, the handsome kid has expanded the family by becoming the father of a little Lea de Seine, born of his love affair with Irina Shayk. He takes care of it as soon as he can. “Having a child and a family is a miracle and something I’ve always dreamed of,” said this gaga dad and ultra present, in 2018, at Paris Match.
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