Bradley Cooper is “not sure” he’d be alive if not for daughter Lea

Bradley Cooper has revealed that he is “not sure” whether he would still be alive if it were not for his six-year-old daughter, Lea.

In an appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast, he suggested that the arrival of his daughter gave him the grounding to realise that he needed to slow down.

“I just needed someone to say, like, ‘We’re gonna drop this massive anchor,’” Cooper said. “I’m like, ‘Why? We’re speeding! I just got an upgrade on the boat, and I know where the wind’s coming in.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, no, there’s a tsunami coming in, and you need an anchor and we’re gonna drop it.’ Because this is gonna dictate everything you do from now on. Your DNA is going to tell you that there’s something more important than you.”

In the past, Cooper has been open about his struggles with addiction, although it is thought he has been sober for many years.

Lea was born to Cooper and his then-girlfriend Irina Shayk in March 2017. The two were a couple from 2015 to 2019.

In 2021, the actor also recalled an “insane” moment when he was held at knifepoint while picking his daughter up from school in New York City.

“It was pretty insane. I realised I had gotten way, way too comfortable in the city. My guard was down … I was all the way at the end of the subway,” he said. In the end, Cooper managed to escape by jumping over a nearby turnstile and hiding.

Cooper recently starred and directed the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. He has said that he directed the film in character as the late conductor, having been inspired by Christian Bale’s method in 2013’s American Hustle.

He also faced controversy around his decision to wear a prosthetic nose while playing Bernstein.

“The truth is I’ve done this whole project out of love, and it’s so clear to me where I come from with this,” Cooper said in response. “My nose is very similar to Lenny’s actually, so the prosthetic is actually like a silk sheet.

“And I thought, ‘Maybe we don’t need to do it,’ because it’s all about time of prep. But it’s all about balance, and, my lips are nothing like Lenny’s, and my chin. And so we had that, and it just didn’t look right [without the prosthetic].”

Cooper also recently revealed that he considered Adele for the lead role in A Star Is Born, the 2018 film that marked his directorial debut. The role eventually went to Lady Gaga, but Cooper confirmed, “I thought about Adele for a while,” he said, before continuing that those plans “never even took off at all”.

It is also known that Beyoncé had been given the role but later had to drop out. “She was incredible. And we went down the road and then it didn’t work out. I remember I was so nervous,” Cooper said. Jack White was also considered for Cooper’s own role at one stage.

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