Bradley Cooper is “not sure” he would be alive if it wasn’t for 6-year-old daughter Lea De Seine.
“I just needed someone to say, like, ‘We’re gonna drop this massive anchor,’” Cooper, 49, told “Armchair Expert” podcast host Dax Shepard on the Monday, February 26, episode while discussing fatherhood. “I’m like, ‘Why? We’re speeding! I just got an upgrade on the boat, and I know where the wind’s coming in.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, no, there’s a tsunami coming in, and you need an anchor and we’re gonna drop it.’ Because this is gonna dictate everything you do from now on. Your DNA is going to tell you that there’s something more important than you.”
The Maestro actor appeared to be referencing his past struggles with addiction, which he’s been candid about over the years. (Cooper has been sober since the early 2000s.)
Cooper welcomed his daughter with then-girlfriend Irina Shayk in March 2017. The two dated from 2015 to 2019.
Further discussing fatherhood, the actor went on to recall the first time he realized that he would “die in a second” for his daughter.
“I’m always like, if I’m being honest, ‘Eh, I don’t know.’ The first, like, eight months I’m like, ‘I don’t even know if I really love the kid.’ It’s dope, it’s cool, I’m watching this thing morph, and then all of a sudden,” he explained. “My experience was totally that. Fascinated by it, love taking care of it. Would I die if someone came in with a gun? It’s only a couple of months! … She could be an a–hole! … And then all of a sudden, it’s like no question.”
He also praised — while subsequently acting dumbfounded — Lea’s emotional intelligence.
“Her ability to articulate her feelings at 6 years old,” Cooper said. “Her mother and I are bowled over at this human being that we’re raising that is able to articulate, and by the way, in her voice. I don’t even think I found what my speaking voice was really like until a couple years ago.”
While baffled by his daughter Cooper’s also happy that his daughter is “armed” with the “articulation” of her feelings.
“The world now is so much more complicated than it was when we were growing up. The access to information, everyone’s opinion,” he continued. “Our children are exposed to the realities of human behavior and how septic it can be.”
Aside from being super mature for her age, it seems, Lea also has an acting credit under her belt already — thanks to Cooper.
“Yeah, she was great,” the actor gushed over his daughter’s cameo in Maestro last month. “She was really awesome.”
Lea made her acting debut as the younger version of Maya Hawke’s character, Jamie Bernstein, in the film, which was released via Netflix in November 2023.
