Has Bradley blown his Oscar chance by trying too hard?
NOBODY has worked harder — or plumbed greater depths of personal revelation — than actor, director and producer Bradley Cooper, who is in dogged pursuit of a Best Actor Oscar this year, at the FIFTH time of asking.
His film Maestro, about the life of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, is nominated in seven categories. And Cooper, 49, has campaigned so hard for it that we now know that he showered with his dad, talks to his six-year-old daughter while he’s on the loo and is ‘totally’ OK with wandering around the house naked.
He’s also posed for a magazine cover in an icy river. In his underpants. The actor even wept on camera when discussing how much he ‘missed’ Bernstein (whom he actually never met) — while Bernstein’s adult children looked on.
Netflix have been equally busy — or is that desperate — spending a figure described by sources as ‘at least’ $20 million (€18.3m) on trying to propel Cooper into the winner’s circle, in a year when the atomic epic Oppenheimer has unstoppable momentum. The streamer has an equal hunger for Oscars, having never won best picture, although there is talk that it had agreed to a certain level of promotion for Maestro to land the prestige project in the first place.
In one week earlier this year, Netflix sent out gifts of Maestro chocolates, coffee-table books and vinyl records. Meanwhile it has been spending big on billboards around Hollywood — not to mention $90,000 (€82,000) -a-pop ‘For Your Consideration’ adverts in the trade magazines.
Sadly for Bradley, it looks like all the activity has resulted in a freeze-out, with bookies reckoning he has just a one per cent chance of winning.
Meanwhile, Cillian Murphy, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, is completely the opposite. He loathes campaigning — there are dozens of TikToks of his bored face in interviews — but he is a shoo-in to carry off the statuette for his performance in Oppenheimer.
A spokesman for Netflix says it ‘never’ discusses budgets. But an insider says: ‘A figure of $20million is possible for marketing on what is their key awards title this year. Their total marketing budget stretches well into ten figures.’
MICHAEL Niederman, professor of cinema at Columbia College, Chicago, said: ‘I understand how extraordinarily proud he is of the work he did on Maestro... but if I don’t see a picture of Bradley Cooper for six months, that will be OK.’
Michael Schulman, who wrote Oscar Wars, said: ‘I just feel like the Bradley Cooper media machine backfired on him. Netflix put a lot of money behind it [Maestro] but it did not work. There is a perception that he’s a try-hard.’