Set the scene: you’re sitting in the cinema, Ally has just won a Grammy for Best New Artist, Jackson – insanely drunk – fumbles after Ally to the stage slurring his words. Your heart breaks.
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As painful as that scene was to watch, Bradley Cooper‘s performance was convincing as hell. Not to mention, he directed the damn film so that’s acting-cutting-directing-acting-some-more all in one.
Not bloody easy.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Cooper revealed he had stayed in character – fake-drunk – throughout the scenes Jackson was real woozy in – “especially the Grammy scene”.
It makes sense but HECK, that sounds bloody difficult.
“Thank God the actors were willing to allow me to direct them sort of in that state because it was easier to stay in that space,” Cooper told Vanity Fair. “It just took me a little longer to communicate what I wanted.”
As Vanity Fair shared, Cooper has been sober for almost 15 years now and used his own past addiction to play Jackson.
In other scenes, Cooper would automatically switch into “director mode”… like in that other heartbreaking scene between Jackson and his brother Bobby (Sam Elliott) when they return from the rehabilitation facility and Jackson tells Bobby that he’s always looked up to him.
“‘To see Bradley get out, perform that beat, shut the door’ – and then immediately shift into director mode – ‘and pick up a monitor, walk around to the front of the truck… I’m there like, ‘What the fuck, man? I’m still in the scene’… It was a really incredible moment for me to see Bradley-actor [switch into] Bradley-director. We did two takes of that,” Elliott said.
You can read the full Vanity Fair feature, HERE.
A Star Is Born is in cinemas now.
