How Christian Bale fundamentally altered Bradley Cooper’s approach to acting
We all know Bradley Cooper’s face, having seen him in everything from goofy comedies and beloved rom-coms to intense dramas and crime movies. While the actor initially struggled to receive his mainstream breakthrough, Cooper cut his teeth in the industry for several years, appearing in episodes of shows like Sex and the City and The Street.
For some actors, it’s just pure luck that they land a role that takes them to unprecedented heights. Cooper was booking jobs, but nothing was allowing him to progress to the levels of Hollywood stardom he had always dreamed of – that’s until he landed a main role in The Hangover. The buddy comedy about three men who, after a drunken night of partying, must locate the whereabouts of their friend, is a 2010s comedy classic that is loved by many. It helped to establish Cooper in the industry, and he reprised his role in Part II and Part III.
In between these films, he starred in some other popular titles like The Place Beyond the Pines, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and The Guardians of the Galaxy. It didn’t take long for Cooper to be taken seriously as a multi-talented actor, easily able to embody comedic characters as much as serious ones. However, it was his experience of working with Christian Bale that actually shaped Cooper’s approach to acting in the early 2010s, forever changing his outlook.
The two appeared alongside each other in American Hustle, directed by David O Russell. The movie was set in the late 1970s, with Bale playing Irving Rosenfeld, a character based on the con artist Mel Weinberg.
While he was playing the conniving Irving, Cooper, who portrayed an FBI agent named Richie DiMaso, studied Bale’s acting methods. “American Hustle was the first time I saw an actor stay in the voice of a character. It was Christian Bale. I had heard stories about Daniel Day-Lewis. I couldn’t figure out how someone could do that,” he explained to Variety.
Evidently, Cooper had always thought method acting was too intense for him. The infamous method actor Day-Lewis has been known to stay in character when he’s not filming, even if that means being fed his food by crew members or carried around the set. This has never appealed to Cooper, but when he realised that it didn’t have to be that complicated, he decided to borrow from Bale instead.
“I realised I was overthinking it,” Cooper explained, “Christian just stayed in the voice, but we talked about his kids. It wasn’t like he saw an iPhone and had a heart attack. Ever since American Hustle, that’s how I’ve done it as an actor.”
After their performances in American Hustle, Cooper was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ by the Oscars while Bale picked up a ‘Best Actor’ nomination. From there, Cooper continued to carry the lesson he learned from Bale with him into other roles, and he has since been nominated for three more acting Oscars, including ‘Best Actor’ for A Star Is Born and Maestro, both of which he directed, too. His career has only continued to earn him more success, which he partly credits Bale for inspiring.
