Bradley Cooper Explains 4-Month Marriage to Jennifer Esposito
Credit: John Sciulli/WireImage; John Shearer/WireImage
Although everyone's waiting for Bradley Cooper to pop the question to longtime love Renee Zellweger, some fans of the Limitless hunk forget that Cooper's already been a husband once . . .albeit briefly!
Now 36, Cooper was married to actress Jennifer Esposito for just four months. (After a late December 2006 wedding, the Blue Bloods actress, 38, filed for divorce in May 2007.)
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Cooper opened up about the short-lived union during a Monday chat on Howard Stern's Sirius XM radio show.
"It was just something that happened," Cooper said, without detailing exactly when he knew things were off. "The good thing is, we both realized it...Sometimes you just realize it."
As Stern prodded him for info, the actor explained simply: "It just wasn't right. It's interesting...things happen!"
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Cooper added that it's "not true" that the experience turned him off to matrimony for good.
"Making any declarative statement [like that] is a joke," he scoffed. (Indeed, Zellweger, 41, also had a quickie marriage: She and country crooner Kenny Chesney were also married for 4 months in 2005 before getting the union annuled.)
Stern also couldn't help but notice a wedding band on Cooper's right hand. The star explained that the ring belonged to his father, who passed away in January.
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But, for now at least, he insisted to Stern that he has never proposed to Zellweger, whom he met six years ago on the set of their flick Case 39.
"Then I didn't see her for a long time," Cooper explained. "I got married..."
The resolutely private star avoided almost all of Stern's questions about his romance with Zellweger, which began in fall 2009. One thing he did reveal? She's a Howard fan!
"She loves you," Cooper told Stern. "She speaks very highly of you."
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Stern explained that he and the Oscar-winning actress "shared a beauty parlor appointment" years ago at a movie studio as he shot his flick Private Parts.
"She [was] so friendly and personable," Stern gushed. "She sent me a beautiful bible when I got married."
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What kind of guy was Cooper before stardom, Zellweger and ex-wife Esposito? "I didn't lose my virginity until I was 17," he admitted.
And he didn't exactly take Hollywood by storm when he first arrived at age 26 with a part in ABC's Alias with Jennifer Garner.
"I couldn't get into the SkyBar at the Mondrian Hotel in L.A. when I first moved there..No one was looking at [me and my friend]," said Cooper, who remembered "sitting back at this one-bedroom thing I'm renting, depressed as hell. My sister came to visit for a week, she wanted to kill herself. L.A. can be horrible!
Tell Us What You Think
8Jennifer Esposito is drop dead gorgeous. Plus she has chemistry across the screen. Fans like me are waiting for her to earn an Emmy, Oscar, or Golden Globe Award in the future. Thomas Chi Publisher PresidentSarah.Net
I just think it's funny when People refers to Renee as his "longtime love." They've only been together for a year and a few months! That's really not very long at all. I do wish them all the best, though. :)
yay they both have a quickie failed marriage in common LOL
He didn't lose his virginity until 17? What, is that considered old now?
i have liked him since jack and bobby, when i first saw him, in 2003.
Case 39 was filmed 6 years ago, it sat on the shelf for a really long time.
i'm sort of confused here... it says they "met six years ago on the set of their flick Case 39"... but that movie was filmed in 2009, released in 2010... maybe it was supposed to say six months?
Wait a minute - he didn't lose his virginity until he was all of 17 and he's ashamed of that? Sad.