MaestrostarBradley Cooperhas reacted to his multipleAcademy Awardnominations, describing the experience as “very surreal.” Cooper, who has been nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Leonard Bernstein inMaestro, which is also up for Best Picture, heaped praise on the movies that have been chosen this year when discussing the recently revealed nominations withDeadline.
“I mean just first of all, it is the year itself, to be included in a year where there’s just such incredible films. And then when we were finishing the movie, there was a discussion of whether it would come out next year or this year, and I remember thinking that I knew the movies that were coming out. I thought it would just be amazing if we were ever so lucky to be in a mix with these films, and these performances so it’s a thrill. And for all the work that everybody put in, for many of us to be acknowledged, you know, Pete it’s like very surreal.”
Cooper, who wrote, directed, and produced Maestro, said he was not disappointed at all at not being included in the Best Director list and is just excited to receive the recognition from both the Academy and the BAFTAs.
“I really didn’t know that we were going to get anything thing today, so the fact that we got seven nominations is incredible. That really meant a lot to us. You know the BAFTAs are incredible and I’m excited. I just get excited that we get to go and we get to see each other.”
Cooper also took the time to applaud hisMaestroco-star, Carey Mulligan, who has been nominated alongside Cooper for Best Actress for her performance as Felicia Montealegre.
“It was my hope when I started to realize what movie I wanted to write and explore, that there would be an actress that could fulfill that, and then Carey not only fulfilled it, but allowed me to explore cinematically in ways that I wouldn’t know if she wasn’t able to just be, I would say, almost transcendent, so that the camera, that the movie wants to stay on her. So I just listened to the movie and listened to her from what she was doing.
She really commandeered it in a way that I wanted her to, and that I wanted Felicia to, and I think that’s why the children became so excited from the very beginning that their mother’s story was going to be explored just as well as their father’s. But Carey, I’ve always been a huge fan of hers. I really do believe that she’s doing something even that I haven’t seen before, and that is what you hope as an actor to keep growing. And I’m excited to see what she’s gonna do next and I hope and pray I get to work with her again in my life.”
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Bradley Cooper Heaps Praise on His Fellow Oscar Nominees
Cooper has beenthe subject of some online mockeryamid accusations that he is desperate to win the Best Actor Oscar. However, in his conversation with Deadline, he went on to heap praise on his fellow nominees, which include Cillian Murphy, Colman Domingo, Paul Giamatti, and Jeffrey Wright, saying that he and Domingo in particular had become fast friends.
“I have to say I’ve gotten to know Colman who I just love, and to be able to talk to him today was just awesome. And what a performance. We did a photo shoot for a magazine recently. And then we exchanged numbers. And since then, we’ve just been, you know, talking and texting and I was able to just to tell him how wonderful he was in Rustin. I got to meet Cillian (Murphy) at the Golden Globes who I’ve never met all these years. I remember we kind of started out around the same time. I feel like he exploded though with 28 Days Later, and then Sunshine blew me away.”
Cooper described the nominees as a “community,” and had thoroughly enjoyed meeting some of the actors he most admires during the awards season.
“So that is the one great thing about this time of the year is you get to meet people that you’ve been fans of and just sort of shower praise on them. Then the other thing is, it starts to feel like a community. Somebody else is doing the same thing when you’re making a movie, and when you get to the end of the year, and you’re all together and you realize, ‘oh, yeah, they were making Oppenheimer when they were making Rustin, and while we were making Maestro, and then it feels really like that sort of emotional sense of that there’s a community.”
The 96th Academy Awards is due to be shown by ABC on June 11, 2025, at 4:00 p.m. PT (7:00 p.m. ET) and you can seethe full list of nominations here.Maestrois now streaming on Netflix.
