How Bradley Cooper took over Hollywood: from addiction and self-loathing to nine Oscar nods

He was a booze-fuelled frat boy in ‘The Hangover’ and a Method actor who worshipped Day-Lewis and spooked De Niro with his intensity. As Bradley Cooper transforms into Leonard Bernstein in ‘Maestro’ (controversial prosthetic nose and all), Geoffrey Macnab explores the life of the complex, ‘amazingly charismatic’ and very private superstar

Master of Hollywood: Bradley Cooper attends the premiere of ‘Joker’ in 2019 (Getty Images)

Bradley Cooper wasn’t the obvious choice to play the West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein. The A Star Is Born actor and filmmaker, who was once voted the “sexiest man alive”, isn’t Jewish. Nor is he known to be bisexual. Fans remember him starring alongside a tiger in Todd Phillips’s booze-fuelled frat boy movie The Hangover (2009), or as a troubled but heroic soldier in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014). Then there was his turn as the bipolar ex-schoolteacher in Silver Linings Playbook (2012), and voicing scrappy hero Rocket Raccoon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. None quite as refined as Bernstein. Yet next week, his biopic of the composer – titled Maestro – premieres at the London Film Festival. And he’s managed to prove the doubters wrong.

In the weeks leading up to the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, Cooper was caught up in an unholy row about the prosthetic nose he wore to play Bernstein. US-based organisation StopAntiSemitism expressed outrage at the make-up, calling his casting as the composer “sickening”. He was even accused of “stealing” the role from half-Jewish actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who had been trying to mount a rival biopic.

This, though, turned out to be one of those manufactured controversies that collapsed as soon as anyone actually watched the movie. Bernstein’s children defended Cooper vigorously, pointing out that their father indeed had “a nice, big nose”. The make-up artist, Kazu Hiro, was apologetic about “hurting people’s feelings” and insisted he had only been trying to portray Bernstein as “authentically as possible”.