PITCH PERFECT
Bradley’s singing fears
Spare a thought for Bradley Cooper and his appearance at the Oscars in a couple of weeks. Not only is he likely to miss out on a coveted gold statue in all three of the categories the actor’s nominated in, he’s also going to have to get up on stage and sing – and he’s terrified.
Bradley will be joining his A Star Is Born co-star Lady Gaga to perform their hit Shallow, which is nominated for Best Song, and he’s starting to feel a little daunted about agreeing to do it.
“I was like, ‘Why? I must have some sort of death wish,’” he admits.
At least Bradley (44) has had a bit of practice recently, though. In January, he gave a surprise performance of Shallow with Gaga (32) when she called him up out of the audience during a show she was doing in Las Vegas.
“That was terrifying,” he says. “I just had to zen out and pray that I wasn’t going to ruin her show... I thought, ‘Please, just let me be on pitch.’”
Not known as a singer before he did A Star Is Born, Bradley has wowed audiences with his vocal abilities. He took singing lessons for 18 months with country singer Lukas Nelson – son of Willie Nelson – and went from never having sung in front of anybody to performing in front of 80,000 people at Glastonbury for a scene in the film.
“I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to do this. I should just mouth it and I can record it later,’” he says.
But Gaga insisted all vocals were recorded live and not tampered with later, so the voice in the film is raw Bradley.
There’ll also definitely be no muting of his voice for the duo’s Oscars performance on February 25.