How Bradley Cooper became a director, Lady Gaga became an actress and “A Star is Born”.

Bradley Cooper's directorial debut, A Star Is Born, is being released. This is a remake of the 1937 American film, which at one time received an Oscar for best screenplay. Bradley is clearly aiming to collect even more statuettes: it’s not for nothing that on the set he not only acted and filmed, but also sang - and not with anyone, but with Lady Gaga herself.

Actor and four-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper has added a new line to his resume: director. In a good way, we should add one more - a singer. In the film “A Star is Born,” the 43-year-old handsome man not only directed the filming process, wrote the script and played the main male role. He also sang—and sang a lot. Not in a cozy studio under condescending and encouraging comments from producers, but live on the most real stages in front of crowds of real fans.

“Singing ''live'' is scary even in front of a film crew, but what if there are 20 or 80 thousand people in front of you? Every time I asked: “Maybe we can turn on the soundtrack?”, and they answered me: “What are you talking about?” Sing like that!''” the debutant director recalls, not without pleasure, I must say.

Everything is for real

They say that the offer to sing only live and record the soundtrack for the film not in the studio, but during the filming process, came from the female lead, Lady Gaga, who wrote all the songs for the film. They immediately seized on her idea: it really does look and sound more authentic. Moreover, for the sake of maximum realism, they filmed not in pavilions, but at the legendary Stagecoach and Coachella music festivals in California.

There have been no such precedents in the history of feature films - Bradley the director definitely succeeded in something that even the masters cannot boast of. He also distinguished himself as an actor and music lover, singing on the same stage with Robert Plant, Thom Yorke and, of course, Lady Gaga.

Two bright stories

If you think that the film is about singers, music and creativity, you will be right, but only partly. First of all, this is a picture about love, and then about music, which connected two loneliness - the mature country-rock musician Jack Maine, whose career is going downhill, and the failed singer Ellie, who herself does not believe that she is worthy of recognition. As you may have guessed, they are played by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. She seems to be no stranger to cinema, but for the first time she played the main female role in such a large-scale project.

“Actually, I wanted to become an actress even before I wanted to become a singer,” Gaga recently made an unexpected confession to the world of Stefani Germanotta.

As a girl, she joyfully repeated her cherished dreams of a big movie to her classmates at school, and they mocked her. “These emotions, when they don’t believe in you, they laugh at you, I remembered while getting into the role of Ellie,” the singer recently said at the Los Angeles premiere of the film “A Star Is Born” to People. In the film, she doesn’t believe in herself, but one day Bradley Cooper’s character begins to believe in her. This confuses her at first, but then gives her hope and strength to go where she was previously afraid - to the big stage.

Burning with love

“It's a love story between two flawed people at different stages of life,” Bradley explains. He lights up his star. She, already ready to forget her dreams forever, begins to burn - and every day it gets brighter. His fate is to be burned by the rays of her glory, to quietly fade and fall beyond the horizon. The eternal plot that this couple played seemed to have lived through.

Critics have already given the film, released recently in America, the highest marks. Well, the journalists who followed the filming and carefully studied the joint interviews of Bradley and Gaga were completely ready to divorce the actor and his beloved woman, Russian-born Irina Shayk. Allegedly, Lady Gaga captivated Cooper so much that he was ready to make her his guiding star outside the set...

Chemistry and life

“A friend for life, that’s who I found on this set,” Cooper dotted the i’s in an interview with People. At the film's premiere in Los Angeles, he talked about how his first meeting with Gaga went. When he called her with the proposal, she invited him to her home for dinner. There they sang together - in the literal sense of the word. She began to sing, he joined in, she asked in surprise why he hadn’t sung before... The recording of the spontaneous duet, made on the phone, was presented to the bosses of Warner Brothers Pictures the next day. They immediately said: “We believe!”

The chemistry between the leading actors is disconcerting - just see the trailer to be convinced of this. Look at how Cooper's character looks at Gaga's Ellie, who sought solace in alcohol and illegal drugs, but found it in this inconspicuous-looking gray mouse with a strong voice, but weak self-confidence.

We won't know without makeup

The film "A Star is Born" gives us all a rare chance to look at the singer "without special effects." We saw her in glitter and latex, with a mermaid tail and even in meat, but never in ordinary jeans and a T-shirt, almost without makeup and with an inconspicuous hair color. Gaga confirms that for this film she decided to “be naked” as much as possible - to show a vulnerable woman with all her weaknesses, fears and complexes. Of course, she doesn't believe it when Cooper's character tells her she's beautiful! But this man is too convincing, and now a flame flares up from a spark.

“They just met, but there is already such harmony between them, and they both let themselves go, lowering the walls they had built,” Cooper says. - And then they constantly build them, then destroy them, then build them again. A huge tsunami of emotions that overwhelms them, which more than once leads to tragic consequences.” Which ones - see for yourself. And remember the words of the classic: if the stars light up, it means someone needs it.