You may not recognize the name Bradley Cooper but chances are you’ll recognize his face when you see it. He has starred in movies like Wedding Crashers, Failure to Launch, He’s Just Not That Into You and more (including his first starring role film The Hangover due out in theaters in June). He also starred in TV shows like Alias, Nip/Tuck … and is rumored to be cast as Hal Jordan in the rumored Green Lantern movie. That’s quite a resume for a guy we hardly know. Cooper is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine … so let’s get to know him, shall we?
“Is death or mortality something you think about or you’re fearful of?” Bradley Cooper, the star of The Hangover, asks as he crosses the parking lot of a Ralph’s supermarket in Venice, California, in April. Cooper, best known for playing “Sack” Lodge, the summer-house bully who body-slammed Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers, likes mixing in conversational drop shots like this. Last night, for instance, between his first and second order of steamed clams, he asked, “Do you like people? Do you have an interest in people?” It’s easy to fall for his big servings of brotherly love, equal parts laid-back L.A. and Philly Italian. According to his mother, this amiability made his schoolteachers so suspicious they used to ask her, “Is your son trying to pull something?” But the thing you forget—at least I did—is that the 34-year-old Actors Studio grad has arrived at the brink of superstardom thanks primarily to his dead-on comic timing. As I launch into a story about a talk I had with my dad on his deathbed a few years ago, Cooper stands by the door of his Mercedes truck listening, unwrapping his recent Ralph’s purchase, and flossing. Halfway through my story he starts moaning: “Oh . . . mmm . . . Wow, was that great!” … Hollywood careers can start in unexpected places—John Wayne’s first (uncredited) role was an Ivy Leaguer, George Clooney made his film debut opposite an animatronic bear—but Cooper is genuinely surprised that he’s coming in via the comedy entrance. “I’m not even funny at all,” he says. “That’s what’s so ironic.” He leans over the console in his truck. “I’m kidding. I have my reel. I’ll show you.” Then, after a beat, “I’m kidding.” He grew up idolizing Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis, not Bill Murray and Steve Martin. If anything, he says, he felt suited to “Harrison Fordish” real-guy action roles. But the instant he admits this, he sends himself up again. “Just because when I was a kid, I would fake-fight all the time. I was really good at the sound effects. That’s the reason why I thought I could be effective in this business.” The Hangover, which opens right in time for wedding season, is a departure from the man-boy comedies of recent vintage: Three guys at a Vegas bachelor party wake up on the floor of their Caesars Palace fantasy suite to learn that they’ve lost the groom, along with any memory of the night before. The unlikely trio of leads—Ed Helms (Andy from The Office), Zach Galifianakis (a veteran of the stand-up circuit who has played a bunch of homeless guys), and Cooper—are perfectly mismatched: Helms plays the flustered romantic, Galifianakis the tagalong misfit, and Cooper the instigator with buckets of bad advice. Or as Helms puts it, “the uptight nerd, the weirdo, and the alpha-male cool guy.” Warner Bros. feels so confident about the movie’s box-office prospects that, even before the opening, it signed on for a sequel. Not bad for a project that most people thought had no bankable star when it went into production. But director Todd Phillips knew better. He expects that after The Hangover people will start seeing Cooper as a leading man instead of just “the asshole boyfriend of the girl,” the sort of part he’s been getting so far. Phillips sees Cooper moving into the kind of territory inhabited by actors named Grant (Hugh, Cary). “The key with any comic actor is the willingness to fail and make a fool of yourself,” he says. “A lot of times, guys that look like Bradley think, ‘Ah, I don’t have to do that. I have this other thing.’ But Bradley doesn’t give a fuck.” For now, Cooper claims, he never gets recognized anywhere. “I don’t have to curtail my life at all,” he says the morning after our clam feast. “Zero. Zero. Zero.” To the extent that’s true, it’s probably thanks to his hair, which can be completely distracting. In person, his features, a grab bag of wicked good looks—the road-trip scruff, the sniper’s blue eyes, the thin and curling lips, the pointy Shakespearean chin—are pretty much what you see onscreen, but he keeps the hair so operatically disordered that you barely notice the movie star beneath it. One other reason he never gets spotted: He’s up before anyone else. So that we can burn off some of that seafood by hitting one of his favorite mountaintop runs, Cooper and his G 55 come by my hotel at 6:30 A.M. At that hour, you might bump into a few nature photographers, but not a paparazzo … “It’s an unusual situation,” Ed Helms says of his Hangover costar. “Bradley is a highly intelligent being wrapped in a hot, studly body.” Zach Galifianakis sees a different side. “He likes to nap,” he says. “He’d come over to my trailer and ask if he could nap near me. It was weird. The first time he did it, I was in my trailer, running my mouth about how my sneakers looked like something Paula Poundstone would wear. After 12 minutes of monologue I look over and I’d bored Bradley into the cutest nap face the world has ever seen. Twenty minutes later he woke up and we chewed tobacco.”
I’ve heard many good things about Bradley Cooper … I’m not surprised to read that he’s a pretty down-to-Earth guy. Every time I see a trailer for The Hangover in theaters, the whole audience erupts in laughter every single time. I’m pretty sure the movie is gonna be a big hit and it feels like Cooper’s time to shine. After the jump, check out a couple other photos from Bradley’s Details magazine shoot — you’ll see why his hawtness needs to be more famous …
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