Kyle had a very specific look (a hulking mass of muscle) and sound (a twangy Texas accent), neither of which Cooper possessed at that time, and without which the portrayal could be deemed an insult to Kyle’s memory - Cooper’s worst nightmare. Then, back in Los Angeles, it came time for Cooper to get down to work.
And we also got tons of material from it - a lot of what’s in the movie came from that weekend,” including “hours and hours of footage.” It was the thing that sort of concretized it for us and really made us both realize just how important a responsibility we had. “We spent three days with Taya, Kyle’s wife, and McKenna and Colton, the two children, and then Wayne and Debbie, his parents, and Jeff and Amy, his brother and his brother’s wife. Cooper describes the chance to visit this “sacred ground” as a “privilege,” rolling off the names of Kyle’s entire family from memory. The octogenarian finished the book and then signed up.īefore filming began, Eastwood and Cooper took a trip together to Midlothian, Texas, to visit Kyle’s family and try to better understand his life. But, very soon thereafter, the producers approached Spielberg’s close friend, Clint Eastwood - who Kyle had identified as his first choice to make the film, and who happened to be reading Kyle’s autobiography when he was offered the gig. Steven Spielberg, who had been attached to the project, withdrew from it, citing budget-related concerns, and throwing its future into some question. Read more Clint Eastwood’s Oscars Challenge: Getting Liberal Voters to Love ‘American Sniper’ But I didn’t tell anybody that!”)Ī deal with Kyle was completed 20 months after negotiations began, “and then,” Cooper says quietly - do not read the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t seen the film - “all of a sudden, I get a call from Jason Hall that he was murdered.” Chris Pratt was the guy in my mind - always - to play him. (Cooper meant what he told Kyle - but, he confesses now, “At that time, I didn’t really think, honestly, that I was right to play Chris, but it was the only way that I was gonna get the movie produced. “I just wanted to call him,” he remembers, “and say, ‘Hey, I know it’s Hollywood and you probably have a lot of trepidation, and you don’t know me, but I’m telling you, I’m giving you my word, we’re gonna do everything we can and we’re gonna work with you.’ “ Negotiations were dragging on endlessly, so in 2011 the actor - who was also officially signed on to the project as a producer - decided to ring up the veteran to make his case. to go after the rights to Kyle’s life autobiography.
And then the idea with the enemy? That there’s another sniper? There was a whole structure of how to frame the movie that I felt could be new and compelling.”Ĭooper got Warner Bros. “I saw it as a Western, almost like Unforgiven, about this guy who has this special skill that happens to be killing people. “I really loved this story and this idea, the way that he framed it,” Cooper recalls. Subsequently, Cooper and his Hangover director Todd Phillips had formed a production company, 22nd & Indiana, which had a first-look deal with the studio, so Hall wanted Cooper to consider it. Hall had penned a script about Kyle - who had not yet even written his autobiography - but Warner Bros. Read more Bradley Cooper in ‘The Elephant Man’: Theater ReviewĬooper first learned about Kyle from their mutual friend, the actor-turned-writer Jason Hall.
But when I sat down with Cooper in New York last week, the extent to which he went to achieve such a powerful performance made me appreciate it even more. That much was obvious just from watching the film, as I did at its AFI Fest world premiere back on Nov.
In a year in which more great leading performances are clamoring to land one of the five slots in the best actor Oscar category than any other in recent memory, inability to campaign could keep Cooper out of the running - but it shouldn’t.įew film performances this year required as much commitment and talent than Cooper’s. THR‘s theater critic David Rooney writes that Cooper gives a performance “staggering in its physical discipline, its piercing emotional transparency and, most surprisingly, its restraint.”) (The production officially opened Sunday night at the Booth Theatre, where its original incarnation premiered 35 years ago, and where I caught a preview performance last week. 25 - is not available to talk much about himself at the moment, being in the midst of starring in The Elephant Man eight times a week on Broadway. Why? Because the 39-year-old star of Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper - a harrowing portrait of the life of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who was the most effective American sniper during the Iraq War, which Warner Bros. Allow me to take a moment to talk about Bradley Cooper.