Three Oscar nominations — «They shouldn’t have nominated me at all!» Success with the ladies — “Nicknamed Sweet Brad? Are you seriously?» The protagonist of the film that broke box office records — «But I didn’t make it!» Meeting Bradley Cooper, who doubts his triumphs, but no longer doubts himself.
He cooked dinner for one journalist — spaghetti with squid stuffed with herbs. I met with another in the gym and talked at the simulators. A third rode with him on the London Underground from Edgware Road to Heathrow Airport (almost an hour) … Now I understand why it is absolutely impossible to interview Bradley Cooper — decorously, as it should be with the stars, in a specially filmed suite of a five-star hotel.
The fact is that Bradley Cooper does not give interviews. He doesn’t answer questions. He refines your questions by asking his own ad infinitum. He wants to answer directly, but instead he reads a poem by John Donne or Sylvia Plath as an explanation, he may even ask for advice. He intends to talk to the journalist as if he were a new acquaintance. Know your opinions, what kind of family you have and what your literary tastes are (the latter is excusable — after all, he is a philologist with a diploma in Nabokov). But he categorically refuses to be the main topic of conversation … And this is all despite his roles, the status of the “new Paul Newman”, Oscar nominations, the exquisite subtlety of the face and the oceanic transparency of the eye, the perfect alignment of the proportions of the figure and the aristocratic narrowness of the foot. Bradley Cooper refuses to consider all these factors — that he was born to be in the spotlight. Or at least in the middle of a conversation about yourself. And he certainly is not ready to discuss his successes …
Psychologies: Look, facts are facts. Your Hangover had a fantastic box office for its R category. You almost became the spokesman for the spirit of the nation in Sniper. Many of your roles are recognized as outstanding. Why don’t you want to talk about how you feel about all these achievements?
Bradley Cooper: You are just like my mom. She has a lot of complaints about my interviews. She says in a stern voice: “Son, why are you saying all this? That you weren’t popular at school, that you weren’t loved. It’s all not true! You were a wonderful child when I drove you in a stroller, people stopped and lisped, everyone liked you, the girls of the lower grades were looking for your attention, the mothers of the boys set you as an example, and the boys considered you a profitable friendly acquisition! So he says: a friendly acquisition. Like, I had value. But that’s the trick, what matters is not how you are evaluated, but how you yourself perceive it. And I felt completely different. I was lonely, secretive and, to be honest, somewhat false: I played out sociability with complete introversion.
But why didn’t you feel your worth as a child?
B.K.: Now I think it’s because I was blond. Do not laugh. My father is Irish, and my mother is Italian, she has the most Italian of the surnames — Campano. So, dad had almost no relatives, and mom had a large Italian family. All my childhood was spent among my mother’s relatives. And there everyone is so sultry, so Sardinian. Cousins, cousins, aunts, uncles … And I — in Irish ancestors: curls, white eyebrows, bright eyes. Until the age of ten, they generally took me for a girl. Since I was different both in temperament and in appearance, some kind of protective distance from the real state of affairs apparently formed in me.
- Reese Witherspoon: “I’m a complex person. Like everyone else»
But there is also a danger here: I am different, I do not need to live according to general laws.
B.K.: Oh, for such far-reaching conclusions I would not have had the courage. I tend to choose to compromise and not burden the universe at all. I just go my own way and don’t expect much. And I like to make decisions so that they do not affect other people.
“I tend to choose a compromise and not burden the universe at all”
Is it possible?
B.K.: If the decisions concern only me, of course. When I decided to become an actor after all … That is, I always knew that I would be an actor, my dad was a terrible cinephile, and in Philadelphia there was — he still is — a cinema, the family owns it, right across the street from the house. And my dad and I went there. I saw the same “Elephant Man” that I now play, but then it was a Lynch film … I was about six years old. And I was shocked. John Hurt — The Elephant Man! He played with one eye, distorted plasticity … unbelievable. I realized that I would be an actor. But education is education, and I went to university. And finished. And then he decided that there was nothing more to wait, and entered the acting studio. It was then that he made the first decision of his completely independent and who did not make anyone dependent — he took a loan from a bank to pay for education. Fabulous 70. I didn’t ask my father — why involve parents. It was a crazy move, of course. But it is known that actions, seemingly insane, but due to internal necessity, are justified. And after a while I got a role in the series «Spy», and this is six seasons. I repaid my unthinkable loan fairly quickly. Although, while I was studying, everything was not easy — with money. I worked nights as a porter at the Morgans Hotel. So luxurious that once our guest was Leonardo DiCaprio, and I accompanied him to the room. It was my duty to meet guests, open doors, sometimes escort them to their rooms.
- Benedict Cumberbatch: «Shock invariably brings me new knowledge»
Interesting: here you are studying at the acting studio and carrying DiCaprio’s suitcase. Was it tempting to speak up?
B.K.: None! He is a star, from another world. Our worlds could intersect…only when tipping. You see, I just wanted to work as an actor, I like this kind of sculpting — to create someone else from the material of myself. I was not going to compete with the stars, to become another Brad in Hollywood!
How can you not dream of the top in such a profession?
B.K.: For me, in this profession, the main thing is not the top, but the fact that you are constantly rejected. They don’t choose. You know, I was already 26 when I arrived in Los Angeles. They didn’t even look in my direction, the agents didn’t take me on. I realized that the girls from our university, when they called me Sweet Brad, were right — there is nothing in me but general cuteness. I was sitting in a tiny apartment that my friend and I rented for two, and I almost howled. My sister came to visit me, spent a week with me and left with the threat that another day in this apartment, and she would commit suicide. I guess I have some other kind of competitiveness. I’m not from the sport of individual achievement. I even went in for rowing at the university — and this is not just a team sport, it requires exceptional teamwork. They tell me: change your agent, your agent also works with your competitors. But I take it easy: at the top there is a place for everyone. There’s a lot of space there. In addition, my relationship with the agent is more important to me, and they are very intelligible. I can always count on the truth. It is important. I appreciate it when I ask to arrange a meeting with the director about some project where I really really want to play, and the agent calls him and then honestly tells me: you know, he can’t stand you. And I’m free from illusions. In general, I think this is the most valuable thing — when you are told the truth. You receive a gift — clarity, freedom from illusions.
You provoke me to an unpleasant question: your marriage, which lasted only four months … Was it the fruit of illusions?
B.K.: In a way… My parents got married in 1963 and lived together until my dad died four years ago. And they were absolutely sincere and absolutely open to each other. And somewhere in the depths of me, this illusion took root — that marriage is such in itself. You find a person, and then — «happily ever after.» And in our relationship with Jennifer (Cooper’s ex-wife, actress Jennifer Esposito. — Ed.), Something suddenly happened … Something not bad at all, even good. I mean clarity is always good. Jennifer clearly felt the discomfort of our marriage. Literally within a week. She realized that I was not the person she was waiting for as a husband. And filed for divorce.
- Nicole Kidman: «I wish I had nothing to hide»
… About what she wrote in her memoirs. Didn’t it offend you that she published something so personal about you?
B.K.: No, I’m saying that something good happened — her priorities became clear to her. And she did not torture herself or me. I solved this issue surgically — almost instantaneous amputation. But, you see, then I generally felt differently, I parted easier. And now I know: what happened, happened forever. Everything has changed.
And why has everything changed?
B.K.: Dad is dead. Do you remember Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake? Dad’s death for me was, in this Blake’s philosophical sense, a loss of innocence. Dad meant a lot to me, a lot. It was important to me that he came to my defense at the university and praised me. When I lost interest in acting and, frankly, fell into an alcoholic depression for two years, he was one of the reasons that I got out of it — I didn’t want to upset him … And so he died of lung cancer. On my hands. I was with him all the days that he was dying. Heard his last breath. This was his last gift. With his death, my own death became a reality. It was like switching some kind of toggle switch: I realized that I was finite. Holding my dad’s hand as he died, I touched my own death. And he stopped … bathing. I can’t control everything, which means I will let life go free. I was a deeply insecure person, covered in sweat when I had to say two words in public … After my father’s death — no, a second later — I believed in myself. I realized that the main thing should be the main thing, the secondary should be in the background. What didn’t happen, won’t happen. This discovery was the loss of innocence — a farewell to illusions, to uncertainty, to slurred feelings. I am who I am, and I am here for now … I wear my father’s wedding ring, which I took from his hand after death. Is always. I never take pictures. How did dad not take it off? I then went back to living with my mother.
Does an adult man live with his mother? It’s not easy.
B.K.: But there was no self-sacrifice in this. We needed each other. And they lived together for two years. With my father’s death, life became for me … gray. Nice smooth grey. But before it was black and white: light-darkness, good-evil … Now I have stopped judging and condemning. And when you don’t judge, it’s easier to make connections. It became easy for me with my mother, as simple as it had never been before. Although she is certainly a tough nut to crack. Steel and old hardened. You see, that’s why I don’t like to talk about all these Oscars, re-Oscars, career successes: the only real success is our relationship, our connections. We will definitely die. Therefore, only what we feel for each other matters.