PTA Helping Bradley Cooper's Acting Career Shows Why You Should Have a Network

Have you ever wanted to quit that filmmaking life?

No matter your particular concentration, it can feel so much easier just to stop, especially after these last two pandemic years. Things have not been easy for anyone. Even Bradley Cooper is struggling.

Lucky for him, he had Paul Thomas Anderson to sort him out. Cooper recently sat down with Mahershala Ali for Variety's Actors on Actors series. He told the story of being pulled from the brink by PTA and how it reinvigorated him and his acting career. 

Check out the whole video below, and we'll cover the comments after. 

As you saw in the interview, Cooper says, “The reason that I didn’t give up acting is Paul Thomas Anderson.”

He expanded on the situation, saying, "When he called me to maybe be in his movie [Licorice Pizza], I mean really, I think I’d open up a door in his movie. I’d do anything.”

Cooper had just come off Nightmare Alley, which was a hard shoot. They got bumped by COVID, it was an emotional character, and he was worn out. Cooper said, “I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m doing it.'"

But like any great director, PTA persisted, working to make the actor feel comfortable, bringing Cooper to set and explaining the process to him.

“I spent three and a half weeks with Paul. I watched all the camera tests. He was teaching me all about lenses, things I never knew. He’s incredible.”

Another thing that Cooper had to deal with was his own insecurity. He had only got Nightmare Alley because Leonardo DiCaprio had fallen out. And he knew that was running through his brain the whole shoot.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I still am the guy that wants to be in the group,’ because I had no intention of acting in anything other than I’ve been writing,” Cooper said. “Thankfully, it wound up being an incredible experience. And that was very interesting to me to play a character, Stanton Carlisle, who has clearly been traumatized as a kid, has no parental foundation, has no foundation for love, intimacy, real connection, and he just is surviving off of a gratification and a desperate need to find out who he is.”

This just goes to show that the feelings you have are relevant at every level. In Hollywood, you're always fighting for your next project, but you need a great circle of people who believe in you to help keep you going.

Who's in your circle? How do you support one another? 

Let us know in the comments.