Everybody Wants Bradley Cooper Right Now
A few reasons why, by way of a preview from our June/July cover story iPad video and all
A few reasons why, by way of a preview from our June/July cover story — iPad video and allBy Lisa Taddeo /// Photographs by Nigel ParryNOW OUT: Read the Full Cover Story >>
The Violent, Willful Self-Realization of Bradley Cooper - Russell Crowe
[In his twenties, Cooper] worked the graveyard shift at the Morgans Hotel in New York... One evening, he ferried Leonardo DiCaprio up to his room and Bradley Cooper thought to himself, We are worlds apart. He says he did not mean that in terms of DiCaprio, you are famous, and I, Cooper, am wearing a doorman uniform. He says he was referring to art. DiCaprio, then in 1998, was riding the Titanic swells, and Cooper, enrolled at the Actors Studio, was still pinking in the audience when De Niro came in to guest lecture.
Bradley Cooper: "Since Limitless opened, my agent calls me every morning and asks, 'Do you feel any different?' And I'm like, 'Nope. Do you feel any different?'"
"Thirty-six is a great age for a man, perhaps the perfect age," I say. He responds, "What about my forties?"
"There is no off switch for his career," say three of his friends in three separate conversations.
"Oh my God, I am so fucking lazy," Cooper says. But even his laziness is moderated, because all is about capitalizing on a moment.
Cooper admires his peers, like Zach Galifianakis, he says, for the self-fulfillment they have already achieved. "I like the way he walks through life." He pauses. "I like that line."
...Cooper laughs. I like the way he walks through life. "If you have me saying I like the way that sounds, then yeah, that makes me sound like a douche."
[Cooper's crew coach at Georgetown University] tells the sort of story that becomes legend after someone is famous, of how Cooper left the team to pursue a play but returned near the end of the season, hoping to compete in the big race, the Dad Vail Regatta.
"There is a fierce, fierce, fierce fire in that guy," he says... "That determination of his — nobody should ever underestimate that."
[In Wet Hot American Summer] there is a scene in an equipment shack where Cooper has sex with Michael Ian Black.
"I remember saying," says Cooper, "'What if we wear tube socks, and I'll go up on the wall, and you'll come from behind me.' And I said in the scene, 'Say my name,' and Michael says, 'Ben!' And I say, 'No! Say my Christian name,' and he whispers, 'Benjamin,' and that's when I came."
His father passed away this year. He moved in with his parents in his hometown, Philadelphia, for his final five months. He took his father to an Eagles playoff game on a Sunday and he died the following Saturday. On Cooper's right hand he wears his father's wedding ring. He has brought his mother to live with him in his new home in Los Angeles.
"I love having her," he says. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
Cooper: "Being in Us Weekly does not make you famous. Paul Thomas Anderson does not read Us Weekly and go, 'Hey, look at this guy! I want this douchebag in my next film.'"
Cooper: "Russell Crowe. Shit. He is. Next level."
The Fantasy NYT Op-Ed Page
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Dinner with Bradley
Bradley Cooper's Man-Thigh Gives Short Shorts a Bad Name
Bradley Cooper : The ESQ&A
Watch Bradley Cooper Destroy One of Neil Young's Craziest Solos... On Air Guitar
The Sentencing Of Bradley Manning
The Heartthrob: Bill Bradley