“Directing is where my brain feels most comfortable,” Bradley Cooper responds when asked about the challenge of directing himself in a film.
His critics are going to say that phrases like that show that he is pretentious and wants to act intellectual.
Even when his friend Steven Spielberg is the interviewer and he is trying to explain to her that it is not a schizophrenic process that he experiences on the set going from one side of the camera to the other.
It is the second time that he is director and actor of a film.
He has just done it in
Maestro
, playing the conductor
Leonard Bernstein
and had already done it in 2018 in A Star is Born, alongside Lady Gaga.
For both films
he was nominated for an Oscar as an actor, but not as a director
.
Some maintain that this happens to him because he tries too hard to promote himself as a director, rather than as an actor.
It doesn't help that in cities like Los Angeles, for example, posters advertising the Netflix movie multiply on the street, on buildings, on the sides of buses.
So much exposure opens the doors to his haters.
Nobody knows why they criticize him so much
.
The guy is talented, good people, the actors he directs can't stop praising him.
Very disciplined, he does not mind spending 6 years preparing for a role, as is the case with Bernstein in
Maestro
, where he had to practice a lot to be able to conduct the London symphony orchestra live, in a magnificent cathedral.
Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan, as Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre, in "Maestro."
Photo: Jason McDonald/Netflix via AP
Bugs Bunny, a baton and the kid's dream
Born in Philadelphia, Bradley Cooper studied art in New York and has had a long career in Hollywood.
His success came in 2009
with
What Happened Yesterday?
, which would inspire a very fun saga of bachelor party movies.
Accumulating 12 Oscar nominations at the age of 49 speaks of a very fruitful career and also probably of the frustration of not having been able, until now, to go home with the award.
When he was eight years old, he did not want to be an actor, but rather an orchestra conductor, and his parents gave him a baton.
He liked to see how Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry used it to make music and that became his obsession.
Over the years he became a fan of Leonard Bernstein and that is why he did not hesitate to ask Spielberg, executive producer of
Maestro
, to give him the opportunity to direct it himself.
Bradley Cooper, at the latest Critics Choice Awards.
Photo: Reuters/Aude Guerrucci
It would end up focusing more on Lenny's marriage to a Broadway actress, although she was bisexual, and the beautiful family they formed.
The portrait of a complex and fascinating man who also composed the musical
West Side Story
(Love without barriers).
The controversies he aroused with Maestro
First, Bradley Cooper received a lot of criticism for the prosthetic nose that was added to look more like his character, with makeup sessions lasting between 3 and 5 hours.
Bernstein's children were not offended
.
What's more, they made available to Cooper and
Carey Mulligan
, the actress who plays her mother Felicia and who is also nominated for an Oscar, all of her photo archives, her family home and her closets. full of clothes.
They are even more amazed at how the actor managed to capture his father's personality and his way of speaking, changing the timbres of his voice as he aged.
On the networks they accused him of being a “diva” for saying that when he directs he doesn't like the chairs on the set.
Mulligan defends him.
Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, in "A Star is Born."
There he was also nominated for an Oscar as an actor, but did not win.
Photo: Neal Preston/Warner Bros. Pictures
Bradley Cooper's method seems to be to try not to make it obvious that they are filming a movie
, to turn it almost into a play, with very few takes.
“He makes movies to win awards,” some repeat, as if that were wrong.
His whitewashed romance with model Gigi Hadid doesn't help him.
Is it envy?
He recently interrupted a virtual interview to go attend to his daughter Lea, who he shares with his ex-partner, model Irina Shayk.
A sweet guy who chooses to go to the awards ceremonies with his mother.