Bradley Cooper almost quit ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’
Before he became an award-winning global star with several Oscar nominations, Bradley Cooper featured in an array of titles that weren’t necessarily meant for mainstream success.
Beyond his major success, many people primarily remember Cooper for his role as Phil in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover films, where he portrayed the leader of the ‘Wolfpack’. However, prior to this breakthrough moment, the actor made his feature-length debut in the 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer and played a supporting role as the detestable jock Sack Lodge in Wedding Crashers alongside Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.
Following his success in The Hangover movies, Cooper transitioned into more serious roles, including the 2011 film Limitless. However, perhaps more significantly, he starred in The Place Beyond the Pines, directed by Derek Cianfrance. A critical hit, the movie tells three linear stories but primarily focuses on Ryan Gosling’s character, Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider who supports his young family through crime. Cooper portrays Avery, an ambitious policeman whose life becomes entangled with Luke’s after he kills him halfway through the film.
Without showing his scope as a dramatist in Cianfrance’s movie, Cooper might not have gone on to star in future acclaimed dramas such as American Sniper, A Star Is Born, and 2023’s Oscar-nominated Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, which he also directed and co-produced.
In a new discussion with IndieWire at the New Directors/New Films festival, Cianfrance revealed that Cooper nearly pulled out of The Place Beyond the Pines, which might have tremendously affected how his career played out. Just as principal photography was set to begin, Cianfrance enlisted the screenwriter Darius Marder to rewrite “every word” of the movie. According to the director, Cooper wasn’t happy with the changes to Avery.
“I had given [Marder] the script and he had a lot of notes for it, and I kind of agreed with a lot of what he was saying. And so we rewrote every word from 10 weeks to six weeks,” Cianfrance recalled. “I remember giving Bradley Cooper the copy of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines,’ the new script, and getting a voice message from him saying, ‘Bro, I just want to let you know I read the new draft and I’m out.’”
Per Cianfrance, Cooper was irritated because the new script was “not the movie” he had signed up to act in. However, all was not lost. The next day, he was moving with his family and crew to Schenectady to film. He managed to contact Cooper by travelling to Montreal, where they spoke from midnight to 3:30 in the morning. A struggle, it was only in the closing minutes that the actor changed his mind: “It was only in the last five minutes [he was convinced]. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.”
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