Best known for his roles in The Hangover, A Star Is Born, American Sniper and Nightmare Alley, Bradley Cooper recently shared an encounter he had with a famous director who inferred that Cooper didn’t deserve his Academy Award nominations.
Bradley Cooper has been nominated for nine Academy Awards over the span of his twenty-year-plus career. Four for acting, one for writing and four for producing. Sadly, Cooper has never won but just to be nominated for an Oscar is still a huge accolade in Hollywood.
However, during a recent episode of Smartless – a podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett – Cooper recalled a famous director making a rather snide comment that implied Cooper should never have been nominated at all.
Apparently, in 2019 (when Cooper only had seven Academy Award nominations under his belt) Cooper was at a party and was chatting with this director (who Cooper never named) and an actress, who at the time had been nominated for three Academy Awards.
According to Cooper, the director remarked, “What world are we living in where you have seven nominations and she’s only got three?” To which Cooper replied, “Bro, why are you such an asshole?”
Cooper after telling this story on the Smartless podcast went on to say,
“I would never f***ing forget that. Go f*** yourself.”
Bradley Cooper
This isn’t the only time Cooper’s been taunted about his Oscar nominations either. During the same Smartless episode, the actor also talked about a “hero female actress” (again, Cooper never named names) who back in 2012 – when Cooper received his first-ever Academy Award nomination for his performance in Silver Linings Playbook – was extremely patronising towards him.
“She’s like, ‘I saw your movie. You deserve the nom.’ I was like, ‘What? I’m sorry what?’ ‘The nom.’”
Bradley Cooper
Clearly, Cooper felt this actress was saying he only deserved the nomination but didn’t deserve to win, as he went on to say,
“Then like 10 or 20 minutes later, I’m not kidding, I passed her going to the bathroom and she mouths it, ‘The nom.’ I remember [thinking], ‘what the f*** is this town?’ Can you imagine saying that to somebody? You’ve got to be f***ed up to do that.”
Bradley Cooper
Currently, Cooper is working on Maestro – a film he’s directing, co-writing and producing as well as starring in. Maestro won’t be released until at least 2023, but the film’s already generating Oscar buzz; perhaps it’ll be the film that’ll finally get Cooper that golden statuette.
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