Bradley Cooper Felt ‘Insecure’ as Second Choice to Leonardo DiCaprio for ‘Nightmare Alley’

For Bradley Cooper, signing on to play troubled grifter Stanton Carlisle in “Nightmare Alley” meant facing his own “insecurity and ego.” The eight-time Academy Award nominee scored the role only after the film’s original leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, had to drop out of the production.

“ ‘Nightmare Alley’ was an interesting example of how insecure I am,” Cooper told Mahershala Ali in their recent Actors on Actors conversation for Variety. It was when he was approached by the film’s director, Guillermo del Toro, that he realized he might still be “the guy that wants to be in the group.” He added, “I still remember thinking, Oh, wow, the guys that don’t hire me—they want to hire me? And then it was like: Of course I have to do it—just because I’ve never been allowed into that group.”

Cooper dove right into the role (which is one of two for him this film season, along with his standout appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza”). Shooting, he adds, “wound up being an incredible experience.” The key was not to bring too much hope to his portrayal of a character who is “deeply traumatized.” Rather, Cooper wanted to embody Stanton’s “deep emptiness” and otherwise be present, leaving himself room to discover more about the character as filming progressed.

“I don’t understand why one wouldn’t want to keep exploring,” Cooper said, noting that the script is a “road map” that an actor must then bring to life based on their own intuition. “Especially in [‘Nightmare Alley’], a lot of things happened on the day. It felt like Stanton taught Guillermo and I about where this exploration into humanity could go. It was terrifying for both [of us] because of that; it was really going into the unknown.”

Whether he’s first choice or second choice, Cooper’s approach to filmmaking remains fundamentally the same: “I look at it as: Do as much as [you] can to create the best piece of art, and then let it go. I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t work as hard as I could to get it to the best place it could be.”