Bradley Cooper has revealed that not recieving a Best Director nomination at the Oscars for A Star is Born made him feel “embarrassed”.
The 44-year-old – who picked up nominations for Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Picture – was speaking to Oprah Winfrey during Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations From Times Square.
“I was with my friend,”’ he said of discovering he was nominated for an award. ”I was in New York City at a coffee shop and I looked down at my phone and Nicole [my publicist] had texted me and they said congratulations on these other things, but they didn’t tell me the bad news.
“I went, ‘Oh wow,’ and the first thing I felt was embarrassment, actually felt embarrassed that I didn’t do my part.”
Winfrey replied” “I’m at least glad you said that. If I were you, I’d be feeling some kind of way about it.”
“Yeah embarrassment,” Cooper continued. “Oh gosh, I didn’t do my job.”
Cooper had been nominated for Best Director at the Golden Globes, and was among those nominated at the Directors Guild of America Awards.
However, whereas Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) and Adam McKay (Vice) all went on to pick up Oscar nominations, Cooper lost out to Pawel Pawlikowski with Cold War.
Despite A Star is Born being a success, both critically and commercially, Cooper admits that loosing always hurts.
“The truth is you feel like a loser when people treat you like it afterwards,” he said of awards shows. “That’s the only downside. The award show ends and first of all, they avoid you a little bit and then they do say, ‘It was a good movie.’ Thanks, thanks.”
