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Tag: Bradley Cooper

  • Bradley Cooper’s "A Star Is Born" Role Hits Close To Home For Sober Actor

    Bradley Cooper’s "A Star Is Born" Role Hits Close To Home For Sober Actor

    “Anytime you’re trying to tell the truth you need to go to places and use things that have happened to you, or you’ve read about or experienced.”

    As someone in long-term recovery, Bradley Cooper’s role of heavy-drinking musician Jackson Maine in A Star Is Born is one that isn’t too far off from the star’s own experiences in the past, he tells Variety. 

    “Anytime you’re trying to tell the truth you need to go to places and use things that have happened to you, or you’ve read about or experienced,” Cooper said. “And that’s all part of the beauty of turning whatever things you’ve gone through into a story. I find that to be very cathartic. I remember learning that in grad school, our teacher said all the insecurities, all the dark stuff you get to use that and that’s really the truth.”

    The film, which hit theaters Oct. 5, has generated a lot of buzz and is being slotted as an award winner, with Forbes calling it the “movie to beat” at the Oscars. Cooper directed the film and co-starred alongside pop star Lady Gaga. 

    Cooper first spoke publicly about his substance use battles and recovery in 2012, stating he had gotten sober at age 29 after his use of alcohol began affecting his work.

    “I was so concerned [with] what you thought of me, how I was coming across, how I would survive the day,” Cooper said at the time. “I always felt like an outsider. I realized I wasn’t going to live up to my potential, and that scared the hell out of me.

    In 2016, Cooper spoke to Barbara Walters about his recovery, crediting his recovery for his success in his career and his relationships.  

    “I would never be sitting here with you, no way, no chance [if I hadn’t gotten sober,]” he told Walters. “I wouldn’t have been able to have access to myself or other people, or even been able to take in other people, if I hadn’t changed my life. I never would have been able to have the relationships that I do. I never would have been able to take care of my father the way I did when he was sick. So many things.”

    As of Oct. 8, A Star Is Born had earned $44 million in North America and $57 million worldwide. Cooper tells Variety that his biggest hope is that viewers forget they are watching Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga and instead get caught up in the story.

    “I hope you just see the characters, that’s the point. From the opening that was one of the key things in structuring the movie and shooting it. I really want to make sure that you forgot it’s me and that you forgot it’s her right away, otherwise the story won’t work.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lady Gaga Reflects On Drugs, "Loneliness" Behind Stardom

    Lady Gaga Reflects On Drugs, "Loneliness" Behind Stardom

    “There was a buffet of options. When I first started to perform around the country doing nightclubs, there was stuff everywhere.”

    Six-time Grammy-winning singer Lady Gaga makes her feature film debut as an aspiring performer who falls for a rocker (Bradley Cooper) with dependency problems in the upcoming A Star is Born.

    The confluence of substance abuse and fame is an issue with which Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta is familiar, having battled cocaine dependency early in her career. And in an interview about the film with the Los Angeles Times, Germanotta recalled how she traveled a path similar to that of her screen character, where drugs were frequently offered as a panacea to the emotional turmoil of striving to achieve your dreams.

    In the film—which is the third remake of the 1937 film, with previous iterations starring Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand in Germanotta’s role— Cooper is musician Jackson Maine, whose career is in crisis due to his drug and alcohol dependency. He finds what appears to be creative and emotional salvation in Germanotta’s Ally, a gifted singer. But as her star ascends, his substance issues threaten to upend their happiness. 

    In her interview with the Times, Germanotta said she fully understood the emotional turbulence that was part and parcel of the pursuit of a career in front of an audience. “It’s very lonely being a performer,” she said. “There’s a certain loneliness that I feel, anyway—that I’m the only one that does what I do. So it feels like no one understands.”

    Feelings of isolation and insecurity can spur some aspiring performers to seek comfort in the substances that can proliferate behind the scenes. “There was a buffet of options,” recalled Germanotta. “When I first started to perform around the country doing nightclubs, there was stuff everywhere, but I had already partied when I was younger so I didn’t dabble. I was able to avoid it because I did it when I was a kid.”

    As Us Weekly noted, Germanotta has spoken often about her struggles with cocaine in the past. The publication quoted her 2011 interview on The Howard Stern Show, where she said, “I think that I was lonely and there was something about the drugs that made me feel like I had a friend. 

    “I did it all alone in my apartment while I wrote music. And you know what? I regret every line I ever did.”

    View the original article at thefix.com