Bradley Cooper’s Acting Career Was on the Line When He Worked With Julia Roberts in This Project
Bradley Cooper was already gaining attention as an actor after having starred in the 2005 feature Wedding Crashers. But he was still willing to push himself as an actor. So when he starred alongside Julia Roberts in a Broadway play, Cooper did so on the condition of a career-ending ultimatum.
Bradley Cooper put his career on the line in this Julia Roberts project
Cooper considered walking away from acting for good before he made it as an A-list superstar. The first time he was on the verge of quitting the business was after his stint in the TV series Alias. The actor managed to snag a role in the Jennifer Garner action series as a supporting character and potential love interest. But Cooper soon noticed a decline in his screen time. The lack of work eventually grew frustrating for the actor.
“I would only work three days a week. And then for the second season, I got even more sidelined,” Cooper once said in an interview with GQ. “I was like, ‘Ugh.’ And then next thing you know, I was like, ‘I want to f***ing kill myself.’”
Eventually, Cooper asked to be written off the series by the program’s show-runner J.J Abrams. But a couple of weeks later he experienced a major physical injury that made him question his commitment to acting.
“At some point, you have to come to terms with The business just doesn’t want you, you know what I mean?” Cooper recalled.
Afterwards, however, Cooper would clinch his role in the comedy Wedding Crashers. The Rachel McAdams blockbuster would keep him in the film industry for the long haul.
In 2006, Cooper decided to put his acting abilities to the test by starring in the Julia Roberts play Three Days of Rain. This was the first theater work he’d ever done, and he told himself he absolutely couldn’t drop the ball on the project. If he did, he might as well have been finished.
“[It was] the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, by far,” Cooper once told The Hollywood Reporter. “I remember thinking, ‘If this doesn’t work, maybe I’m not right for this business.’”
Bradley Cooper planned to give up acting before doing ‘Licorice Pizza’
Cooper seemed to pass his own test for Three Days of Rain . Cooper and Roberts were both praised for their performances, winning an Audience Choice award for their efforts on stage. After the play, Cooper had seen his career touch new heights after starring in films like The Hangover and Limitless. These films not only secured Cooper’s acting career, but turned him into an A-Lister and one of Hollywood’s biggest names.
Despite his flourishing career, Cooper confided to fellow actor Mahershala Ali that he considered quitting the film industry again after all of his success. But this time it was the film Licorice Pizza that kept him going.
“The reason that I didn’t give up acting is Paul Thomas Anderson. When he called me to maybe be in his movie, Mahershala, I mean really, I think I’d open up a door in his movie. I’d do anything,” Cooper said on Variety’s Actors on Actors.
Licorice Pizza was a simple romantic drama that followed the development of a young couple’s relationship. And given Anderson’s reputation, it was a film that Cooper wasn’t going to let anything, even the pandemic, stop him from starring in.
“We broke from Nightmare Alley, I was able to grow a beard and [film studio] Searchlight was praying that I didn’t get COVID, because we had to go back and continue Nightmare Alley, but I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m not doing it.’ That was the first movie back from COVID,” Cooper said.
