Bradley Cooper ‘sweats from his butt’, Jennifer Lawrence says

According to Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper has a sweaty butt! — Cover Media picNEW YORK, Dec 25 — All-round Hollywood darling Jennifer Lawrence might have revealed a tad too much about close friend and “Silver Linings Playbook” co-star Bradley Cooper in a recent interview with KISS FM.

According to the 25-year-old actress, Cooper has a sweaty butt!

“When we were doing our dance lessons together, I’m pretty sure he sweats from his butt first. You know, you’ve got pit stains everywhere but like his butt would start sweating and I’m like, ‘Is your butt sweating before your armpits are sweating?’” Lawrence was quoted as saying by JustJared.com about their dance rehearsals.

Thankfully, Lawrence did not pursue the issue, saying that she wanted to keep their “sexual chemistry” alive. “We didn't, you know, have long conversations about it. It's just something I kind of like clocked.

“I wanted to keep the sexual chemistry alive. I didn't want to be like, 'Hey, can we talk about your sweaty ass?'"

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Bradley Cooper applauds Lawrence's attack on Hollywood pay gap

Actor Bradley Cooper applauded his frequent co-star Jennifer Lawrence on Wednesday for speaking out about Hollywood's gender pay gap and said it was high time to start fixing the problem.

Cooper, speaking to Reuters at a promotional event for his latest film "Burnt," said it was "fantastic" that Lawrence had taken up the cause and that her popularity gave her a great "platform."

"Would people listen if another woman said it?," he asked.

Lawrence won an Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook" and was named as the world's highest-paid actress last year by Forbes, with an estimated $52 million in earnings.

She unleashed a no-holds barred attack on the wage gap on Tuesday in an essay, entitled "Why Do I Make Less Than My Co-Stars," for Lena Dunham's Lenny newsletter.

In the past, Lawrence said she had worried about being labeled a spoiled brat when negotiating movie deals. But that changed after she discovered, through leaked Sony Pictures emails last year, that she had been paid millions less than any of her three male co-stars, including Cooper, for her role in 2013's "American Hustle."

"I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early," Lawrence said.

Cooper, who Forbes said earned $41.5 million in the past year, said he had been shocked to discover what Amy Adams was paid for "American Hustle," which won her a best actress nomination.

"She worked everyday on that movie and got paid nothing. It's really horrible actually, it's almost embarrassing," Cooper said.

Adams "should have been paid more than everybody" for her work on the film, Cooper added, saying he hoped Lawrence's essay would "allow people like Amy to also speak up."

In his own bid to address the pay gap, Cooper said he has begun teaming up with female co-stars to negotiate salaries before any film he is interested in working on goes into production.

"I don't know where it's changing otherwise but that's something that I could do," Cooper said.

"Usually you don't talk about the financial stuff, you have people. But you know what? It's time to start doing that," he added.

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Bradley Cooper Earned My Respect as a Chef

As a girl growing up on a farm in Northern Ireland, I always knew that I wanted to work at the very top level. I was incredibly passionate about food and inspired by some of the greatest chefs in the world, I wanted to work for them and find out what made them the way they were. I loved the creativity, the artistry and the delicate balance of flavors in food that takes you as a chef to another level.

From gaining experience in kitchens all over the world from -- London, France, Australia, both coasts of the United States -- this work has shown me that in the face of great talents, you have the opportunity to absorb something different from everyone you cross paths with. There's no single recipe for being the best at what you do, forgive the pun, but the goal is to combine all those ideologies into your own philosophy about great food. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity at the age of 28 to head up a three Michelin-starred restaurant, a rare honor for a chef and an even rarer one for a woman. I'm not really one to dwell on accolades like that, but I do know that I wouldn't have been able to reach those heights without having had the experience of training under the other great chefs.

Being a top chef we often get opportunities to work outside the kitchen and in the world of TV, radio, books, but I'd never had the opportunity to work with an actor before. One day Gordon announced to me that Bradley Cooper had reached out about a new film he was working on about our industry, and that he wanted our help. Bradley is hugely passionate about food and frequent visitor of top restaurants so it was a privilege to have him in the kitchen with me.

Working with Bradley Cooper on Burnt was an unprecedented experience. Bradley put on his chefs whites and I thought he'd just hang out for a bit in the background, but what really surprised me after spending the time together was just how inquisitive he was. He saw and picked up everything, which made me realize that he was getting inside my head. I was so impressed with the detail and the methods he used to understand the psychology of the chef. He stayed there right to the end of service, soaking up everything he saw, the way we spoke, how I held a spoon or tweezers. He said he wanted any professional chefs who watched the film to feel like he'd done the job justice and that really resonated with me. His schedule became like ours which shows you have to work that hard, to be that good and the top of your game.

For a long while now, I've regarded him as one of the greatest actors in the world, both on screen and in the theatre. This opinion was based strictly on my place as an audience member - taking him in from a distance and not really understanding what it takes to get that polished final product.
I've always drawn a parallel between being a top chef and a professional athlete; both require an immeasurable amount of discipline and focus, and you have to remain committed even when your confidence waivers or your dream will slip away very quickly. After working with the filmmaking team on Burnt, however, I suddenly realize that you can just as easily draw a comparison between my job and that of an actor. There's painstaking attention to the little things involved with both, an eagerness to learn and an unusual amount of drive required in order to achieve the desired result. Both require a willingness to recognize greatness in others and the energy to try and replicate what you've taken from those people. And both have that element of mystery that I'd never fully contemplated before, but quite appreciate. After all, the consumers of your creation -- whether it's a gorgeous plate of food or a moving theatrical performance -- never see what it took to get there. They only taste the flavors and are entertained by what they see on screen. That end result is what we work for though, and why we all love what we do.

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The Life of Bradley Cooper

“I had size twelve feet when I was ten, 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 fourteen feet. I got the raw end of the deal” says talented but modest movie star, Bradley Cooper. Bradley was born in Philadelphia on January 5, 1975. His handsome looks are most likely from his half Irish and half Italian descent. Torn between becoming either a chef or an actor, young Bradley finally came to a conclusion that he was going to become an actor. Not only did he want to become a working actor, but he wanted to be a good actor (starpulse.com). Bradley Cooper is by far one of the most talented and driven actors of our time. He started his life knowing he was going somewhere, and he most definitely did. Anyone in any field of practice can learn something from his determination and modesty.

When Bradley was a young boy, he loved to cook (IMDB.com). He even debated, as a child, whether he wanted to become a chef or an actor. He was influenced greatly by his grandmother who, he says, was an amazing cook. In an interview, he goes on to say that he and his grandmother used to make different kinds of pasta together (IMDB.com).The fact that Bradley speaks of prior interests shows that he is not absorbed in his career, and definitely hasn’t forgotten about his family. He likes to talk about other aspects of life, including his childhood. It also shows that acting was something very important to him, having picked it over one of his childhood dreams. Bradley is obviously very aware of what he wants in life but isn’t afraid to acknowledge the things he used to love. This makes him a very secure yet modest person. These kinds of traits help him be the amazing actor and performer he is today. We can all learn something about the way Bradley sees himself.

Another event that makes Bradley Cooper the successful person he is, would be his graduation from Georgetown University in 1997 (starpulse.com). This is when he decided that he wanted to become a great actor, not just a working actor. He went on in his education and enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at the Actors Studio Drama School at New School. Here he worked very hard and absorbed as much knowledge as he could about acting. He was more concerned about practicing what he loved rather than getting paid for it. This shows great character. There are so many celebrities out there than only care about getting paid and being recognized. That’s not Bradley at all. He is one of the few actors who still cares about and embraces the art of acting. That’s the reason his talents are above those of others. He continued to attend the program while making some small onscreen appearances, a great way to start off his career. His first appearance was on an episode of Sex and the City in 1998 (Yahoomovies.com). This was kind of a big start and a small start at the same time. For a new actor, this was a big appearance; but compared to where he is now, it was a very small start. This is another way that Bradley shows modesty. He accepted the fact that he had to start small to make it big. Graduating from college before starting his acting career was what made Bradley who is he today. He didn’t just jump into acting because he knew that he had to start somewhere. Having a great education to fall back on gave him the confidence to become the amazing actor he is.

In addition to Bradley’s personal and professional success, there was his role in the hit movie “Limitless”. The movie was basically about a man whose life was going downhill. His fiancé left him with basically nothing but his apartment. He was a struggling writer in a deep depression. All of this changed when he discovered a drug that he could take to make his mind work to its full capabilities. It seemed like a great idea until things started to take a turn for the worse. There were so many emotional turns and changes that only a truly talented actor could portray this part. Bradley was outstanding in this role, and nobody could have done it better. It was one of his greatest accomplishments as an actor. One of Bradley Cooper’s greatest influences, Robert De Niro, starred alongside him in this movie (Sacks). This had to be a lot of pressure on him, knowing he was working with someone so famous and with so much more experience. Not only did Bradley star in a movie with De Niro, but he was casted in an even bigger part than he was. This couldn’t have been easy. When they first met, 12 years before the movie was filmed, Bradley was too nervous to even ask De Niro a question at an acting seminar (Sacks). Now he has to work with him at the same level. It takes a lot of confidence to work with someone so high caliber and still do a terrific job. Bradley now has the courage to work with any actor and feel comfortable with his own talents. This was a definite stepping stone in his life. It shows great character to work alongside someone you admire so much and do as great of a job as they do, while respecting them at the same time. Going through this experience eagerly and with respect for his fellow actors, is one of many reasons Bradley has become so successful. We can learn a lot about Bradley’s work ethic, despite what career we are in.

Bradley Cooper is definitely one of the greatest actors around right now for a number of reasons. He has starred in numerous films with great accreditation. He is more than just an actor however, but a trend setter. He takes great pride in his work. The way he goes about his life is something we could all learn from. He has great determination, respect, and modesty. More than a magnificent performer, he is a good and honest human being who deserves to be admired.

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Cover Exclusive: Bradley Cooper Speaks About his Struggle with Addiction

With Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, Bradley Cooper earned star status, now on display in the Broadway revival of The Elephant Man. But with American Sniper, opening this month, Cooper reaches a whole new dimension, playing Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who was murdered in 2013. Buzz Bissinger discovers what a huge challenge the role represented.

every day before going on location Bradley Cooper recited the six pages of exercises. They had been pieced together by his speech coach, Tim Monich, to further reinforce a Texas accent and dialect that Cooper knew, if it didn’t come to him automatically, would rob all credibility. In a film such as this, and a role such as this, the most challenging of Bradley Cooper’s career, there was no margin for error.

Don’t get it right, don’t do the movie. There are many Texas accents in Texas. This particular one, because of all the places the real-life character once lived, had parts West Texas and country Texas and home-on-the-range Texas, a little bit southern, a little bit western, a little bit shitkicker, with idiosyncratic inconsistencies, and yet poetic in its truncation.

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Cooper started with the song “Feelin’ Good Again,” by Texas singer Robert Earl Keen. He did several variations of “Peter Pi per” tongue twisters in dialect as fast as he could, like gargling while still enunciating.

Then the “thing” exercise: There’s nothin’ you can do about innything a cat will or won’t eat. The “pin-pen” exercise: I mean who the fuck does he thenk he is, the fuckin’ Imperor of Kinya? The “are” exercise: You’ll smoke a few cigars, play a little guitar, and you’ll be like Hedy Lamarr. The “git” exercise: Now you git your guitar and git down to business.

Bradley Cooper has shown remarkable range in his film career. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards. But there has always been something effortless about Cooper’s performances, a testament to how good he is, but also the feeling that he never quite bleeds for them. As the director and his close friend David O. Russell observed, Cooper is used to not being taken seriously.

Whatever the reactions to his latest role, in American Sniper—directed by Clint Eastwood and opening in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles on Christmas Day, before nationwide release on January 16—a lack of seriousness will not be among them. The subject matter alone, dark and deep and complex, makes that impossible. But maybe that is the problem. Maybe this particular role is too serious. Too out of his range.

All actors have a comfort zone. American Sniper is based on the best-selling book of the same name by navy SEAL Team Three sniper Chris Kyle, written with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice. Kyle served four deployments in the Iraq war and is credited with more confirmed sniper kills than any soldier in American history. The film is anything but comfortable. Not only does it portray Iraq’s most dangerous hot zones with Kyle smack in the middle, it also balances Kyle’s war experiences with his trying to adapt at home as a father to his two children and husband to his wife, Taya, played by Sienna Miller.

There is also the tragedy that, in the middle of the development of the project, Kyle—a national hero and military legend who had had a bounty placed on him by insurgents—was shot to death on February 2, 2013, along with another man, on a shooting range near Stephenville, Texas. Kyle had co-founded a nonprofit called FITCO Cares Foundation, which supplied at-home fitness equipment for emotionally and physically wounded veterans. He was 38 years old. The alleged shooter, an ex-Marine named Eddie Ray Routh, who had served several deployments and was said to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, has been charged with capital murder. Kyle, according to reports, had taken Routh to the range at Rough Creek Lodge as a show of camaraderie. It was something he had done before.

Cooper had talked to Kyle on the phone, but he never had a chance to meet him in person. “The terrible beauty of the story is how he died and his death,” Cooper tells me. “If you take that away, it’s a much different story.”

Cooper knew he had to reach a point where his belief in the role he was playing was absolute. To do that he had to inhabit it; learning the accent was only one of the requirements. “I have to believe it,” Cooper says several weeks before the opening of the film. “If I believe it, then there’s a chance you’ll believe it. If I don’t believe it, I’m fucked.”

The best actors all risk failure. But the risk in Cooper’s case is still enormous. Not in terms of career, which is thriving more than ever before, with not only American Sniper opening in December but also the Broadway revival of the Bernard Pomerance play The Elephant Man, in which Cooper plays the grotesquely disfigured John Merrick. But in terms of whether he can reach a new dimension in his acting career.

Whereas so many of his characters have been outward, manic in the midst of manic surroundings, this is a role that was almost completely inward, the tightening of his chin as important sometimes as anything he says. It has to be subtle, textured without histrionics.

So maybe he is fucked.

PHILADELPHIA STORY

Bradley Cooper turns 40 next month. He doesn’t look it when you first meet him. There is a disarming boyishness. There are also those Coral Sea eyes that you try not to look at, because you know you will be immediately sucked into the vortex of his eminent and instant likability. He peppers his sentences, sometimes at the beginning and sometimes at the end, with the punctuation of “bro” and “dude” to the point where he should just trademark it.

Although a creature of Hollywood, he spends a significant amount of time in the Philadelphia region where he is from, still hanging out with friends (he calls them “buddies”) he grew up with and went to school with, the home where he was raised in the suburb of Rydal—across the street from the movie theater—still in possession of the family. He grew up in comfort as the son of a Merrill Lynch stockbroker. He went to high school at one of the area’s most prestigious private institutions, Germantown Academy.

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Photograph by Sam Jones.

He talks with wonderment about the first time he saw the David Lynch film The Elephant Man, at the age of 12—on a red couch in the living room, sobbing and in touch even at that age with the dignity and humanity of John Merrick—and knew he wanted to be an actor. He talks with similar passion about the Philadelphia Eagles and motorcycles. (He has five, and if you didn’t nip it in the bud, he would still be talking about them.) His mind is one of those in a constant state of engagement, obsession over there, obsession over here, curious about this, curious about that. He loves food. He loves the combustion of family gatherings, with his mother’s side of the family Italian and his father’s side Irish.

He talks with quiet pain about the death of his father, Charles, at the unfair age of 71, in 2011. But also with quiet beauty, the “privilege” he felt as he cradled him in his arms one final time and felt his last breath. He wears the wedding ring that his father wore and Cooper never saw him take off.

When asked to describe his mother, he just laughs, the clear suggestion that she is one of those sui philadelphius characters thinking she is six feet tall when she is only five and tiny next to the frame of her six-foot-two-inch son. She is a ham. She is a vintage character.

He got those eyes from his father’s Irish roots. He is obviously good-looking, but at a certain point in his career he was told after an audition that those casting the role had found him “not fuckable” (only in Hollywood . . .). His looks do not exude carnal sex appeal. But, as Russell observed, they have enabled him to “look leading-man-ish in a little bit of a Gary Cooper way” but also to “look weird,” depending on the angle of the shot. Which has made the roles he has gotten, in particular under Russell—Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle—more than one-dimensional hunkfests.

He has benefited from the considerable miles he traveled before stardom, the valley of addiction (he has been sober since 2004), the gnawing restlessness of a career not fulfilled, and the wrenching loss of his father after his horrible bout with lung cancer. They have given him experience and perspective, the equivalent in Hollywood of finding uranium underneath your table at the Ivy as you look for your napkin and wait for the egg whites.

“Losing someone close to me. Going through love and loss . . . knowing what’s important,” Cooper says. “Realizing that the bottom line is that all I got is me, so it’s about time to stop trying to be something that I think you would want me to be. Or that would give me what I think I need. As you get older, thank God, your body deteriorates, but your soul sort of flourishes.

“I see life much more gray as I get older,” he continues. “I was so sort of black-and-white in my late 20s. There’s right and there’s wrong and that’s it. That’s a tough way to live. . . . It’s rare that I judge somebody, really rare. I think people feel that, so it’s sort of easy to get close to somebody if you don’t feel judged by them.”

“Bradley isn’t perfect,” says Todd Phillips, who directed him in the Hangover trilogy, which catapulted him to stardom and a reported $15 million payday for 2013’s final installment. “What I will say about Bradley is how evolved he is. I think it’s because he’s gone through a lot of stuff and a lot of struggle. People respond to that in different ways. The way he responds to that is by constantly evolving. He internalizes it in a way and turns it into evolution.”

There is an I-still-can’t-really-fucking-believe-it aura that suffuses him. “I think there is a part of him that can’t believe this has quite happened . . . this boy from Philly,” says Sienna Miller. “He can’t quite see himself as the world sees him.

“He’s been up and been down,” she goes on. “He has really lived, for sure, but he also has managed to hold on to his child-like innocence. There’s something about him that is very pure.”

There seems to be nothing about Cooper that remotely reeks of actor imperialism. To get to rehearsal in Times Square for The Elephant Man, he took the subway. With the cap on his head ducked down and sunglasses and a backpack containing pumpkin soup, to lose the weight he had gained for American Sniper, he looked like a cross between somebody auditioning for a part on Portlandia and an overqualified courier who has been reading Proust since college.

He didn’t participate much in drama at either Germantown Academy or Georgetown, where he graduated in 1997 with an honors degree in English. Nor did he brim with innate confidence. He played high-school basketball and was good at boxing out opponents with his self-described “big ass.” But he never had the confidence to be the one to get the ball and take the shot. “I was too fucking nervous,” he says. It did not begin to change until college.

He decided to apply to the master’s program at the Actors Studio Drama School, in New York, almost as a lark. He had to audition, so he brought as his acting partner a professor from Georgetown who had no experience. The audition was doomed to imperfection. But James Lipton, who sat in on every applicant audition and was then the dean of the school, was drawn to Cooper’s performance.

“It was imperfect, but I recognized something within him,” Lipton says. “Something discernible . . . a kind of accessibility to himself.” As well as a willingness to dare. “What do you like in an actor? My answer is one word: risk.”

When Cooper, for his master’s thesis, performed four scenes from The Elephant Man for a week, his mother took Lipton aside at one point.

“What do you think? Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

“ ‘He’s going to go all the way,’ ” Lipton responded. “I never predicted that for any other student.”

He had no problems getting jobs after drama school. He had a recurring role on J. J. Abrams’s Alias, played a gay camp counselor in the cult classic Wet Hot American Summer, and had a scene-stealing supporting role in 2005’s Wedding Crashers. But something was not right in his late 20s. He devolved into alcohol and drugs. His friends would find him just waking up at two in the afternoon. He ignored his dogs when they needed to be walked. When he went out to dinner he talked only about himself. In August of 2004 he became sober, and he has stayed sober; in the physical transformation for American Sniper he refused to use any stimulants. “I did it naturally because I’ve been sober for 10 years and didn’t want to do anything,” he tells me. “I had a realistic conversation. Can I do this in three months naturally? Can I gain 30 pounds of fucking muscle? I didn’t know if I would be able to do it or not. Thank God—luckily—my fucking body reacted fast.”

In 2006 he appeared in Three Days of Rain on Broadway with Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd. It was “an amazing opportunity” and also a pivotal point in his career. “If this doesn’t work, then I’m not supposed to do this for a living,” he told himself. He contemplated going back to school and getting a Ph.D. in English and teaching literature.

Roberts was the marquee, and the play did not get particularly good reviews. But Cooper had a sizable role that included a roughly 10-minute monologue. It sustained and energized him. A few years later came the same nagging sensation of lack of fulfillment.

“I always knew I wanted to be in the trenches with a director making the movie,” he says. “I always felt that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I always knew deep down that if I’m not going to do that then I’m not too long for this business.”

He turned to the theater again, this time in Williamstown, Massachusetts, starring in The Understudy. On the second-to-last day in Williamstown, he and other potential cast members got an e-mail from Todd Phillips. Six months earlier they had talked about a movie project called The Hangover. But then Cooper heard nothing. Until the e-mail.

“Let’s do this already, bitches.”

The role of Phil, dissolute and cool and careless but fundamentally a good man, launched him. Cooper also got his chance to be part of the process far beyond his own role, diving into the editing room; he displayed a willingness to drop a scene, no matter how good he had been, if he thought it slowed down the narrative. “It’s why he is going to be a great filmmaker,” says Phillips, and Cooper told me that the next stage of his career will be to direct.

Eastwood saw the same thing during the shooting of American Sniper. “He loves to participate,” he told me. “He loves to know everything that is going on. He likes the whole process. I see a lot of curiosity in him. I see a lot of my early self in there.”

“He’d be brilliant, but he’d be a nightmare [as a director],” said Sienna Miller, with the kind of laugh that doesn’t conceal truth. “He won’t let anyone get away with anything.”

Good roles with wonderful actors came in after The Hangover. Limitless, with Robert De Niro. The Words, with Jeremy Irons. The Place Beyond the Pines, with Ryan Gosling. Then, in 2011, David O. Russell, a director as quirky as he is brilliant, came into Cooper’s life withSilver Linings Playbook. He liked Cooper’s prior work but still had the sense that he “wasn’t hitting his range.” Russell remembers them meeting at the Greenwich Hotel, in New York. They talked about the role of Pat Solatano. But Russell remembers that they also talked about “things he had gone through or how he had been guarded or not happy at times in his life.

“He showed me many sides of himself when we discussed my impression of him,” Russell told me. “His response was very open and real. There was a mineshaft of experiences and emotions that he had not put on the screen yet.”

He cast Cooper as Solatano, sweet, mixed up, and mismatched in his bipolarity, yearning for love but looking in all the wrong places. It was by far his most multifaceted role.

“They really took a chance, a big chance,” says Cooper. It resulted in his first Academy Award nomination, for best actor, in 2013.

Following that came another collaboration with Russell, on American Hustle, and another Academy Award nomination, in 2014, this one for best supporting actor, in the role of F.B.I. agent Richie DiMaso, beating up his boss one day and wearing hair curlers the next.

He had mastered his artistic niche, a little bit comedic, a little bit terrifying, a little bit off-center. Then he decided to orbit the earth twice.

TRAGIC TWIST

Cooper loved the American Sniper project when it was pitched to him by the screenwriter Jason Hall. Warner Bros. had previously passed, but on the basis of Cooper’s attachment, the studio purchased the rights to the book in partnership with Cooper’s production company, 22 & Indiana Pictures (named after the corner his father had grown up on in North Philadelphia).

Chris Kyle himself was excited when he sold the rights and learned that Cooper was going to play him, although he did have a caveat: “I’m going to have to tie him to my truck, drag him down the street, and knock some of the pretty off of him.”

Then Kyle was killed without ever meeting Cooper or knowing that his top choice to direct the film, Clint Eastwood, was actually going to make it.

At the end of January in 2014, Cooper and Eastwood flew into the Midlothian area of Texas, near Dallas, to meet Kyle’s wife, Taya, his parents, Wayne and Deby, and his brother Jeff and sister-in-law Amy. Taya Kyle was open and generous, willing to give Cooper anything and everything of Chris’s to make the film as accurate as possible. Wayne Kyle was friendly, but he was also guarded. According to Eastwood, “He was a little bit reticent. I just don’t know whether he knew what to make of it all, kind of going, ‘Who are these Hollywood assholes.’ ”

They also could not have picked a worse time, since it coincided with the first anniversary of Chris’s death. “It’s a year after his son was murdered, and two guys from Hollywood show up and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to make a movie about your son,’ ” Cooper remembers. “What the fuck? How surreal is that?”

Typical of Wayne Kyle, a former telecommunications manager with Southwestern Bell and as no-nonsense a person as you will find in a state legendary for no nonsense, he sat across from Cooper and Eastwood at the dining-room table in the house where his son’s wife and children still lived. “I took the bull by the horns and I said I did not like a movie being made about my son,” Wayne says. “I really didn’t like a movie being made about my son when he was not there to have direct control.” The body of Eastwood’s work gave Wayne Kyle reassurance. But, as he put it, “Bradley was a pretty boy and a citified kid. He is an excellent actor, but we really didn’t know much about him.” He also minced no words in saying that if “you do anything to dishonor my son I will unleash hell on you.”

“I knew this was sacred ground that I was on and it was a very special gift that Clint and I got to be there in this house and meet these people,” says Cooper. “It wasn’t lost on us.” Nor was Cooper’s sincerity lost on Wayne Kyle: “I’ve been around livestock all my life. I can smell bullshit.”

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

It probably wasn’t necessary for Cooper to do the six-page exercise by the time shooting on the film started, last April. During three months of prior preparation, he had temporarily relocated Tim Monich from Connecticut to Los Angeles so they could have two face-to-face sessions of two hours each day except for Saturday and Sunday.

The sessions were in the morning and early evening, sandwiched around two workouts a day of two hours each to gain the 40-odd pounds of pure muscle to resemble Kyle physically. Ideally, Cooper would have had a year. But Eastwood wanted to start shooting in March, before Morocco became too hot.

During his workouts, Cooper listened to the exact playlist that Kyle had when he worked out as a navy SEAL in Iraq in between shifts, sometimes as long as eight hours, enveloped in his own urine because there was no opportunity to take a break when they were targeting insurgents bent on killing American soldiers and suspected collaborators. Kyle is credited with at least 160 confirmed kills.

Cooper bulked up from 185 to around 225. He started eating 5,000 calories a day. He was able at the end to do dead lifts of 415 pounds, five sets of eight reps each.

Former navy SEALs Rick Wallace and Kevin Lacz (he had served two deployments with Kyle) also trained him on how to hold and shoot the various weapons that Kyle utilized. Cooper never equaled the shot from 2,100 yards Kyle once made in Iraq, but he was able to hit targets from 600 yards. Lacz responded the way navy SEALs often respond to superb performance: he said nothing.

Cooper kept in character during the entirety of the shoot. He talked to his girlfriend, the 22-year-old British actress and model Suki Waterhouse, in character. He ordered food at a restaurant one night with dinner companions Miller and Eastwood in character: “Y’all got any red meat?” He argued over another film with producer Harvey Weinstein in character:Harvey, I just gotta tell ya, man, there’s no way that it’s gonna be possible for me to do this.

But it still doesn’t necessarily add up to a great performance. Maybe the expectations are too high. Maybe Bradley Cooper really is fucked.

SCREEN SHOT

In November, I saw a 95 percent completed version of American Sniper in Screening Room 5 on the Warner Bros. lot. With the exception of those directly associated with the production, I was the first to see the film. So my response was not influenced by any critical reaction, or for that matter the reaction of anyone.

There were times I squirmed because of the violence and sound and heat of war. There were times I felt physical dread. There were moments when I looked at my watch. There was also a moment when, despite my being staunchly unsentimental, tears came to my eyes.

Whenever Cooper was on-screen, I felt I was in the presence of something absolutely astonishing, not simply one of the best performances of the year but a performance for the ages, the kind that creeps into your soul at all hours of the night.

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Jennifer Lawrence Reunites With Bradley Cooper, Shows Off Messed Up Tattoo

Jennifer Lawrence may have another shot at an Oscar with her role in David O. Russell’s dramedy, Joy, which involves a reunited all-star cast including Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro. The trio first made magic on the big screen in Russell’s Academy Award-nominated film, Silver Linings Playbook.

Lawrence’s involvement in Joy marks the third role she has taken in one of Russell’s films.People Magazine shares the director’s words in regards to his selected all-star cast for his latest project.

“I have a shorthand with these actors. We share an enormous amount of trust and affection, and it allows us to take risks and we have taken bigger risks in this one.”

Lawrence acts as the female lead in the film, a role which in itself holds a great amount of historical relevance. Joy is “inspired by the lives of several business pioneers, including multi-millionaire inventor Joy Mangano” as People relays. The film focuses on Joy’s family over the duration of four generations and on Lawrence’s character (Joy), who became the matriarch at the age of 27 to develop a lasting dynasty.

Russell, who was an integral part in Lawrence receiving her first Oscar after the actress starred in his film, Silver Linings Playbook, shared his views on the matriarch upon whichJoy is based.

“It’s all from her perspective. It’s very interesting to see [Lawrence’s character] become that godmother or boss.”

Lawrence is sure to dazzle with another remarkable performance while playing a woman of devotion and steadfast determination. The 24-year-old, who always ensures she’s entertaining, whether on the big screen or simply while appearing as her witty and intelligent self, recently gave fans and onlookers one more reason to laugh and adore her.

JLaw fessed up recently to having inked herself with a tattoo that was intended to appear as the formula for water, H2O. Lawrence admits that the symbol she had applied to her hand is actually inaccurate. The Daily Mail shared Lawrence’s explanation to reporters at Comic-Con on Thursday about her rather “watered down” tattoo.

“I know that the two is high and in H2O the two is supposed to be low. I should have Googled it before I got it tattooed on my body forever. I call this tattoo a watered down rebellion because it’s not like a real tattoo. It’s the colour of a scar, all natural so it’s literally the most unrebellious tattoo that anybody could ever get.”

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Limitless TV show snags Bradley Cooper in recurring role

If you didn’t catch the 2011 movie Limitless, based on the sci-fi novel The Dark Fields, you might want to before the fall TV season. CBS has picked up a TV show based on the premise of the movie which was based on the book, and it looks like Limitless the TV show will join next season’s Minority Report series on Fox as “TV shows that are sequels to sci-fi movies.”

Limitless ultimately has the advantage over Minority Report because it will involve the film’s star, Bradley Cooper, as his character from the film. There’s no way Minority Report ever scores Tom Cruise, but Cooper is going beyond what we originally thought he’d do (hand off the franchise in the pilot) and agreed to be a recurring character on the TV series rather than just a one-off pilot movie-star cameo rocket.

Limitless was the story of Cooper’s character Eddie Mora, a novelist with writer’s block. One of his friends who is a chemical researcher gives him an experimental drug called NZT-48 and suddenly Eddie has complete access over his memories: everything he’s ever read, saw, or experienced at all times. At least until the NZT wears off.

As Eddie becomes increasingly addicted to the high of being infinitely smart, side effects start to manifest and withdrawal kicks in when he tries to stop.  The first movie ends with Eddie rising to power and wealth in the US, enough of both to be able to get scientists in multiple labs to reverse engineer and improve upon NZT-48. He claims he’s perfected it and is planning to run for President some day.

The series looks to pick up not long after the movie, with Eddie offering series protagonist Brian Finch (played by Jake McDorman) some NZT for unclear reasons. Finch gets embroiled in the same underworld conflict that Eddie did in the film, but this time Special Agent Rebecca Harris (Jennifer Carpenter) of the FBI gets wise to NZT’s power.

Yes, just like the Minority Report series will take that sci-fi story’s concept, pre-cogs, and find a way to turn it into a crime-solving procedural, so has Limitless. Special Agent Harris and Finch will team up to solve crimes and it isn’t clear from what we know about the series how often Bradley Cooper will appear as Edward Mora (now a Senator) and what his ultimate relationship to Finch is.

Bradley Cooper has been a producer on this TV incarnation since its inception, but his commitment to appearing on the series when his schedule allows adds real cred to what otherwise would be a pretty standard looking CBS crime procedural.

We are talking about Bradley Cooper, star of American Sniper, the highest grossing movie of the last calendar year (including, as of this moment, heavy hitters like Mockingjay Part 1 and Age of Ultron). Sitting at number 4 on that very same list?  Guardians of the Galaxy, featuring Cooper as the voice of fan favorite character Rocket Racooon.

What makes this a good time for Bradley Cooper to use his amassed Hollywood cred to ensure a first season for a Limitless TV show? Was Cooper’s upgrade from a cameo in the pilot to a reoccurring role something he did to help a show he’s producing, or something CBS asked for if it was going to risk a few weeks of aLimitless TV show on its network? Is someone just a little lost now that The Hangover franchise has stopped?

These are the questions that may never be answered if the show is a success. If it bombs, yeah, we’ll get some behind the scenes dish, but we won’t care.

There are limits on my interest in Limitless. That limit is the involvement of Bradley Cooper. He needs to pass off this sci-fi concept to a new cast of a crime-solving procedural.

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