Bradley Cooper on Lenny, Lenny’s Nose, and “The Hangover” Part 4

So what was their explanation for “no”?

I think it was nothing other than logical. It made sense, what they were saying. It’s a huge budget. It’s a subject that no one will be interested in, and we just can’t justify it.

The first thing that I heard about this film, other than the ambient knowledge that it was happening, was this business of the makeup, and should a non-Jewish guy be playing a Jewish guy? And is the nose too big? And so on. Was there a serious conversation about prosthetics?

Well, what you’re speaking of actually came out after we had made the movie. When that came out, I never questioned myself, because all I poured into this project was love. I made this movie with love, and I worked as hard as I could possibly work with love––and so did everybody else. In terms of Lenny looking like Lenny, I knew I had to age in order to tell this love story. He had such a beautiful, iconic face. I thought, Well, working with a master makeup artist like Kazu Hiro, let’s create a hybrid where people can really enter into the illusion of Lenny, because I’m going to do the voice, too. And I have a big nose. Our foreheads, our noses, our eyes—it was all very workable, to create a sort of middle ground. In fact, I was always looking to do the least amount with prosthetics possible. The prosthetic for the nose was like a silk curtain; that’s about the difference between my nose and his nose.

Really?

And it’s wider. And he had a deviated septum. It’s all about balance. When we tried just the lips and the chin, without doing something with the nose, it just didn’t look human. Something was off. And then once we balanced it, in the middle, I believed that it was a human being. Kazu and I spent four years on this. I lived in his house over weekends. So, when that came out, I felt so secure that our endeavor, how we pursued it, was done with love. Now, that said, David, oddly enough, Alex Bernstein [Lenny’s son] sent me a letter saying, We want to write a letter responding to this.

Responding to the press criticism, of so-called “Jewface.”

Yeah. I don’t read anything, but I’d heard about it. I read the letter and then I called him. I’ll never forget it. He said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hey, it’s Bradley. I just want . . .” and I couldn’t talk. I started crying—weeping profusely, really weeping very hard, and he started crying. And then we just hung up.

You were moved out of gratitude toward him?

First of all, I think I maybe didn’t realize how much that hurt—that that’s all people were seeing about the movie. But also just that act of kindness from them, from the children.

Playing Bernstein, you don’t want to do a caricature, an impersonation, right? His voice was kind of liquid, low, aristocratic, and yet swingy. Tell me about that process of inhabiting another human being.