Listened to Bradley Cooper on Fresh Air this morning and it’s quite possibly my favorite interview ever. He is super endearing and gracious and actually seems like a truly decent person.
“There would be calls for, I remember, The Patriot for the Heath Ledger role, or Armageddon for the Ben Affleck role, when I was in grad school. … So I would put myself on tape — I had like a camcorder — and I didn’t even have anybody to read with, so I would actually read the other character’s lines, leave space in the tape recorder and then say my line, and I did that honestly, Terry, maybe 200 or 250 times over the course of two years while I was in school. And then I would just hand-deliver the tape to whatever casting address there was.”
Also, I like the idea of anyone who’s willing to do anything and make a fool of themselves a little bit in the pursuit of following their dream.
Listen here