Bradley Cooper hopes 'Limitless' will propel him from celeb to superstar

AFTER INTERVIEWING Bradley Cooper at a suburban office building, I took the elevator down to the lobby where the doors opened to a crowd of anxious young women.

They were holding cell-phone cameras at the ready, and made no attempt to conceal their dismay when they saw that I was not handsome Brad.

Clearly, Cooper is a celebrity now. He draws stares and crowds wherever he goes. He recently moved from Venice, Calif., to a gated community in the Pacific Palisades to get away from the paparazzi, in hot pursuit now that he's dating Renée Zellweger.

He's without question a movie star.

The unanswered question: Can he open a movie?

We may know by week's end. Cooper tests his strength as a marquee name as the lead in the thriller "Limitless," atop a supporting cast that includes such underlings as Robert De Niro.

"You don't get very many shots at this," said Cooper. "And this is definitely a shot. If you're part of a movie like 'The Hangover,' which is really successful, you get a couple of chances."

The green eyeshades in Hollywood won't be looking at Cooper's performance (it's quite good, by the way); they'll be looking at his drawing power - how Cooper and "Limitless" stack up against Matt Damon and "The Adjustment Bureau," Matthew McConaughey and "The Lincoln Lawyer." If "Limitless" survives or thrives, it will have a whole two weeks before the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller "Source Code" opens.

It's a brutal business.

"The thing that's on my side is that this is not an expensive movie [$35 million] to make. It doesn't need to make that much money to be considered successful. It's not like I'm carrying a $60 million movie on my shoulders," he said. "But still, it's 'Here's what's going on with this guy. Here's a challenge. Can he live up to it?' "

Cooper has done his part, pouring himself into the role of Eddie Mora, a failed novelist who acquires an underground drug that improves brain power tenfold. Mora becomes a literary and financial sensation, but the crash-and-burn consequences are never far away.

It's a dream job for an actor - Cooper gets to sketch two opposing personas, then merge them into an individual who experiences extreme highs and lows.

When Eddie's "high," Cooper gives us some of the grinning arrogance he does so well ("Wedding Crashers"). When Eddie crashes, we get a desperation and vulnerability we haven't seen before.

In all, I told him, a pretty impressive demo reel.

"Thanks," said Cooper, laughing. "We called them old Eddie and new Eddie. Old Eddie, as you noticed, he walks completely different; he talks different. It's something I worked on for months before we started shooting. It gives me a hook into the character, and when I have that, the character becomes real to me, and probably real to the audience."

Cooper seems at peace with the idea that he gave "Limitless" all he had, that it's all now in the hands of the box-office gods.

Part of that satisfaction comes from the fact that "Limitless" allowed him to achieve a career goal - to star opposite boyhood idol De Niro.

Cooper's been devouring De Niro movies since he was a kid growing up in Rydal. Watching De Niro merge his disparate Jake LaMottas in "Raging Bull" planted the seeds for Eddie Mora.

As Cooper moved from TV ("Alias") to movies and gained stature in Hollywood, he kept a vigil for scripts with De Niro attached. A few years ago, word circulated that casting directors were looking for somebody to play De Niro's son in "Everybody's Fine."

Maybe a fellow Irish-Italian, like Cooper?

"I couldn't get in the room," said Cooper. "If you're known in one way, it's hard, and I was at the time known for 'Wedding Crashers,' so the idea of playing an underachieving son, the director wouldn't see me for it."

Cooper didn't give up. He and De Niro shared talent agents, so he prepared his own audition tape and got it to De Niro's people. A long shot.

"Then one day I get a call at 4 p.m. 'Mr. De Niro's at the Bel Air hotel, he'd like to meet you,' " Cooper said. "He couldn't have been sweeter to me. Sat down and said, 'I saw your tape, I don't think you're going to get it,' but basically he told me he liked what I was doing, just hang in there."

The two had a chance to talk, and bonded over their shared Irish-Italian heritage - "it's one of the first things I said to him in the hotel room."

Cooper, a Germantown Academy and Georgetown grad, is so closely identified with his old-money character Sack Lodge in "Crashers" that it tends to obscure his ethnicity.

He's certainly more Mora than Lodge. His mother grew up in South Philadelphia, the daughter of police officer Angelo Campano.

"He was a beat cop for 30 years, back when Rizzo was the captain," said Cooper, who still keeps his grandfather's walking stick, counted among his most prized possessions.

Cooper's father, who died recently after retiring from a long career at Merrill Lynch in Center City, was raised on the other side of Broad and Vine.

"He grew up in North Philly, 22nd and Indiana. The fact that he was a stock broker alone was a miracle."

Another valuable heirloom is the wisdom Cooper inherited from his father. It will allow him to endure the stomach-churning rise and falls that come with a career on the Hollywood roller-coaster.

"He always had a great perspective. The idea that nothing's forever, that was always very clear to him."