In Bradley Cooper, a star and a director are born

Actor Bradley Cooper has finally directed a film, writes Laura Harding

Bradley Cooper has always been itching to direct a film, but it has been a long road to get there.

Along the way he has starred in box office hits like The Hangover trilogy, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Sniper.

But now he has finally done it. Helming a new take on A Star Is Born, he has jumped in with both feet — also co-writing the screenplay, producing and starring, and even co-writing some of the music.

“People I really care about told me to do something less ambitious,” he laughs ruefully, leaning back in his chair in a London hotel room.

“I would have said that to me! But you can’t help what moves you and there was a story I really wanted to tell. Doing something like this takes so much energy so it has to come from a very personal place to motivate me that much, so I didn’t really listen to anybody.”

In the film, Cooper, 43, plays Jackson Maine, a successful singer-songwriter with a serious drinking problem, who meets Ally — played by Lady Gaga — while she is singing at a drag bar. The pair fall madly in love and Jack helps build her confidence to make the most of her talent as a musician.

It’s a famous story that has been told several times before — first in 1937 as a drama with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, then as a musical in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason and then again in 1976 starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, but it felt so personal to Cooper he didn’t see it as remake.

“I always wanted to make a movie. I love cinema so much, and I’ve been around it for almost 20 years as an actor and a producer, so I always knew at some point I would have to do it,” he says.

“And I really wanted to tell a love story about two people who actually are madly in love with each other and how hard that is still to endure.

“I also wanted to talk about family and childhood and trauma and finding your voice and all the themes the movie deals with, so it was very exciting to explore all of those things cinematically.

“Because it was coming from a personal place, I still don’t see it as a retelling — it’s a movie that is within the framework of this property.”

The film also looks at the endless tussle between artistic integrity and commercial success and if the two things can ever go hand in hand.

Bringing in Lady Gaga — who makes her feature film debut in a leading role — was instrumental to making the film a success but for Cooper it was a big responsibility.

“She’d done incredible work as an actress, but to make this huge transition... it felt like we were at the same point individually in our work, and we both needed the same thing from each other, essentially, in order to jump the tracks to this other place.”

And once he got to the other side, he was not interested in making things easy for himself, singing live alongside Lady Gaga for the musical numbers, and even filming on stage at Glastonbury and Coachella.

“At Glastonbury, it was just four of us,” he recalls. “My buddy operated the second camera and we had four minutes to do it.”

Those four minutes of stage time were donated by Kristofferson, who happened to be performing at the festival last summer, and who let Cooper come out on stage to get his shot at the beginning of his set.

I remember everything about it. I got to perform on the stage where I’d seen Robert Plant, Jack White, Thom Yorke — and the best part about it was, after it was over, I got to say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Kris Kristofferson’. Then he walked out. I’ll never forget that.

A Star Is Born is out now