Actor Bradley Cooper has made a candid admission about his 19-year-sobriety, all while atop a mountain alongside British adventurer Bear Grylls.
In a season 2 episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge, Grylls quizzed Cooper about his most meaningful roles over his career.
“The Hangover was pretty career changing,” Cooper said. “I was 36 when that happened, so I was already in the game for 10 years just banging around, so I didn’t get lost in fame.”
After noting that the star had some wild years, Cooper responded: “In terms of alcohol and drugs, yeah. But that had nothing to do with fame, though.”
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“I was lucky,” Cooper continued. “I got sober at 29 years old, and I’ve been sober for 19 years. I’ve been very lucky.”
Reflecting on his past struggles with drugs and alcohol, that star said his experience of addiction made it easier for him to connect with his character Jackson Maine in Cooper’s directorial debut A Star Is Born.
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In the film, Cooper’s character Jackson is a rock star who struggles with addiction.
“It made it easier to be able to really enter in there,” he said of the film he directed alongside Lady Gaga. “And thank goodness I was at a place in my life where I was at ease with all of that, so I could really let myself go.”
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This isn’t the first time the star has spoken candidly about his addiction, having discussed his struggle on a podcast last year.
“I was so lost and I was addicted to cocaine,” Cooper told Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes’ podcast Smartless about his mindset at the time.
During the conversation, Cooper revealed he had “zero self-esteem” and used mean humour as a coping mechanism.
It wasn’t until his co-star Arnett called him an “asshole” that the star realised he has a problem.
“That put me on a path to start changing my life,” Cooper said. “Will Arnett is the reasons. There’s nobody else.”
