Biography

Bradley Cooper

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Overview

Born
January 5, 1975 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Birth name
Bradley Charles Cooper
Nickname
- Coop
Height
6′ 1″ (1.85 m)

Biography

Bradley Charles Cooper was born on January 5, 1975 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Gloria (Campano), is of Italian descent, and worked for a local NBC station. His father, Charles John Cooper, who was of Irish descent, was a stockbroker. Immediately after Bradley graduated from the Honors English program at Georgetown University in 1997, he moved to New York City to enroll in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. There, he developed his stage work, culminating with his thesis performance as John Merrick in Bernard Pomerance's "The Elephant Man", performed in New York's Circle in the Square.

While still in school, Bradley began his professional career, appearing opposite Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex and the City (1998) and on the drama series The Beat (2000). His weekends were spent with LEAP (Learning through the Expanded Arts Program), a non-profit organization that teaches acting and movement to inner city school children. The summers took him all across the globe, from kayaking in British Columbia with Orca Whales to ice-climbing in the Peruvian Andes, while hosting Lonely Planet's Treks in a Wild World (2000) for the Discovery Channel. Bradley had to miss his graduation ceremony from the Actors Studio in order to star in his first feature Wet Hot American Summer (2001). After finishing his second feature Bending All the Rules (2002), his plans to relocate to Los Angeles were delayed when Darren Star hired him to star on the drama series The $treet (2000).

Bradley went on to win the role of young law student Gordon Pinella in Changing Lanes (2002), starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson, and also played Travis Paterson in My Little Eye (2002). He finally decided that it was time to forgo his other New York projects and move to Los Angeles when he was cast on Alias (2001). After supporting roles in Wedding Crashers (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), The Comebacks (2007), The Rocker (2008) and Yes Man (2008), Cooper broke out with major roles in He's Just Not That Into You (2009), The Hangover (2009) and Valentine's Day (2010). He co-starred in the action film The A-Team (2010) and headlined the thriller film Limitless (2011).

Cooper received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor after starring opposite Jennifer Lawrence in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012). He then received two more consecutive Oscar nominations, Best Supporting Actor for playing Richie DiMaso in Russell's American Hustle (2013) (again opposite Lawrence, though their characters shared no significant screen time), and Best Actor for playing Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood's American Sniper (2014), the highest grossing film of 2014. During this time period, Cooper also reprised his role in The Hangover Part II (2011) and The Hangover Part III (2013), turned in another strong dramatic turn in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and voiced Rocket Raccoon in the third highest grossing film of 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

In 2015, Bradley headlined two comedies, Cameron Crowe's Aloha (2015), set in Hawaii, and John Wells' Burnt (2015), set in London, and starred opposite Jennifer Lawrence again in David O. Russell's Joy (2015).

Bradley has a daughter (born 2017) with his former partner, model Irina Shayk.
- IMDb mini biography by: Pedro Borges

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Piercing blue eyes
Often plays devious yet charming characters
Often works with his hero and idol Robert De Niro, David O. Russell and Jennifer Lawrence.

Trivia

Speaks French fluently. He even did an interview, promoting The Hangover Part II (2011) entirely in French.
Cooper has spent many weekends with the Learning through the Expanded Arts Program (LEAP), which is a non-profit organization that teaches inner-city school children about acting.
For six months prior to filming The A-Team (2010) and during the shoot, he cut out sugar, salt and flour and underwent grueling two-hour workouts with a trainer every day.
Became a father for the 1st time at age 42 when his now ex-girlfriend Irina Shayk gave birth to their daughter Lea Cooper on March 21, 2017.
Was a medalist on the Men's Heavyweight Crew at Georgetown University.

Quotes

There was a lot of Sack Lodges at my high school. - Sack Lodge is his character from Wedding Crashers (2005).
[on getting the script for Kitchen Confidential (2005)] I was in New York shooting Law & Order (1990) and the script came along, and I completely connected to it. From the first page, when he says, "Ever since I was eight years old, I knew what I wanted to be." When I was eight years old, I wanted to be a chef or an actor. I used to cook all the time. I worked in restaurants the first half of my life. (November 2005)
I had size 12 feet when I was 10, so I thought I was going to be 6' 8". My goal was to be able to dunk a basket. I wound up being 6' 1" with size 14 feet. I got the raw end of the deal.
[2010, on his younger years] I never lived the life of "Oh, you're so good-looking." People thought I was a girl when I was little, because I looked like a girl - maybe because my mother would keep my hair really long in a bowl cut. I was in a coffee shop once and the waitress was like "What do you want, Miss?" I was 10 or 11 - the worst age to have that happen. I had a jean jacket on and a Metallica pin. I thought I was really cool.
[2010, on the incredible shape he got into for The A-Team (2010) ] As the movie progressed, I got in increasingly better shape. There's this one fight scene with Liam Neeson toward the end, where it's, like, the apex of the work. We finished and Joe Carnahan's like "Brother, come here, look at this," and he played it back, and I swear to God, it looked like my head was digitally superimposed onto someone else's body. I was like "This cannot be me - that's the way I look?" It was so fucking surreal, 'cause as a kid I only fantasized about looking that way. Remember Soloflex commercials? That was huge when I was a kid. It was like "I wanna be the Soloflex guy. Mom, can we get the Soloflex?".