Bradley Cooper: Preeminent Movie Star

While the tentpole heavy summer season is still a few months away, March features a number of eagerly awaited titles, including several sequels and follow-ups. Neill Blomkamp's latest Chappie and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel kick off the month, with Divergent sequel Insurgent arriving on March 20 and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence's latest onscreen collaboration (albeit one filmed before Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle), Serena, closing out the month on March 27.

Insurgent (March 20): The second installment in the film franchise based on Veronica Roth's bestselling young-adult trilogy returns Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet, Theo James, Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller. The sequel, directed by R.I.P.D. helmer Robert Schwentke after Divergent director Neil Burger bowed out of the follow-up, continues the inter-faction battle as the Divergents fight the increasingly powerful Erudites. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

This year, Hollywood made major strides in recognizing the importance of mental health through the accurate portrayal of psychiatric disorders in film. Reese Witherspoon gave a riveting performance in Wild as a woman healing from the emotional trauma of losing her mother by walking the Pacific Coast Trail and reconnecting with herself. Whiplash showed the stress that's an inevitable part of striving to be the best, and the strong impact teachers can have on their students — for better or worse. In The Imitation Game, Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed genius code breaker Alan Turing in a way that showed just how isolating genius can be.

Meanwhile, The Theory of Everything depicted not only how ALS has affected Stephen Hawking, but also the emotional burden on his wife and family. For many, movies are the first vehicle through which they see and begin to understand mental health issues, which is why it is so important that these films reflect reality.

I am thrilled to see Hollywood creating more and more films over the last five years that accurately portray different types of mental illness and hardship. From Silver Linings Playbook to The King's Speech, these films are making a real difference in how the public views and comprehends mental health. Mental health is often misunderstood, but it doesn't have to be. Accurate portrayals of mental illnesses such as autism or bipolar disorder in the media help the general public better understand the reality behind these diseases. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Bradley Cooper earned himself a record-tying third straight Academy Award acting nomination (for American Sniper, following his 2012 Best Actor nod for Silver Linings Playbook, and 2013 Best Supporting Actor nod for American Hustle) —the first time that’s happened since Russell Crowe pulled off the achievement in 1999-2002. Cooper is only the tenth actor ever to score an Academy Award nomination three-peat, and the company that puts him in is, to say the least, illustrious: Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, William Hurt and Russell Crowe. Whether Cooper is as great as those legends is a topic for another debate, but his place alongside them in Oscar history speaks volumes about his current hot streak.

Be it Silver Linings Playbook’s mentally unstable Philadelphian, American Hustle’s ambitious Jheri-curled federal agent, or American Sniper’s stout, nobly patriotic military man, Cooper has exhibited a deft ability to employ his magnetism in varied ways, so that in Playbook, his charm helps offset his character’s self-destructive hang-ups, and in Sniper, his irrepressible self-confidence helps convey—and augment—Chris Kyle’s unwavering sense of duty.

In all three films, Cooper doesn’t turn his characters into versions of himself, but rather emphasizes parts of his natural appeal—his big smile, his hustler-type energy, his poise and quick-witted intelligence—in order to get to the heart of his protagonists. And as 2015 begins, it definitively establishes that he’s more than just a pretty face—he’s our preeminent movie star. Source: www.thedailybeast.com


Bradley Cooper ("Bewildered") video: almost half and hour of pictures and stills of Bradley Cooper.