The actor Guillermo del Toro compared to Gary Cooper: “He feels like a ’30s or ’40s star”
As a visionary filmmaker with a reputation for pushing boundaries and opening cinema up to new ideas, Guillermo del Toro has earned himself access to some of the greatest actors of all time. Owing to his success as both a Spanish-language director and global superstar, these actors have come from all sorts of backgrounds.
Spanish actors Santiago Segura and Fernando Tielve have both appeared in at least two of del Toro’s pictures, while the late Argentinian talent Federico Luppi appeared in three: Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth. As for English-speaking performers, he has collaborated multiple times with the likes of Burn Gorman, Care Blanchett, and Ron Perlman. The legendary physical performer Doug Jones has portrayed several of del Toro’s more twisted creations, including The Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth and the amphibian creature at the centre of The Shape of Water.
Even the names he’s only worked with once are impressive. Take Bradley Cooper, for example, who headed up del Toro’s 2021 film Nightmare Alley. The pair haven’t worked together since, but the Mexican director would almost certainly like that to change, given how complementary he was about his American star while promoting the film.
“I am fortunate that Bradley Cooper exists,” he told Screen Daily. “He’s a director that acts. It was a partnership that was quite moving for me to discover, and it changed the way I shoot things.” Del Toro was referring to Cooper’s work directing the 2018 version of A Star is Born, in which he also starred. In 2023, he followed this up with a second directorial effort, Maestro, a biopic of Leonard Bernstein that he also acted in.
“Physically, he embodies Gary Cooper, almost,” del Toro continued. “He looks and feels like a ’30s or ’40s star, and I had inklings of him being able to go fearlessly into the dark side of his life after seeing A Star Is Born and Limitless.”
Gary Cooper (no relation to Bradley) was a popular and accomplished actor who started out in silent film. He navigated the shift into talkies incredibly well; he had a small part in 1927’s Wings, the recipient of the first ever ‘Best Picture’ award at the Oscars. Starring roles followed with The Virginian, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, High Noon, and two Ernest Hemingway adaptations, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He won two ‘Best Actor’ Academy Awards and was honoured with an Honorary Oscar in 1961. Sadly, he passed away a few months later from cancer, aged just 60.
Del Toro’s comparisons between his Cooper and one from the Golden Age of Hollywood were almost certainly deliberate, and not just because of their similar names. Nightmare Alley is a remake of a film of the same title from 1947. That version starred Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, and Tyrone Power (in the Cooper role) and was directed by journeyman filmmaker Edmund Goulding. The most recent version of the story was nominated for four Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’, though it was among the weaker offerings in that category.
Cooper has spoken about how del Toro inspires him as a creative, so it’s clear that this bromance isn’t just one way. It would be a huge surprise if these two great minds never got together again.
