How Brad Pitt and Bradley Cooper Formed a Tight Friendship

Although, Pitt recently shared he’s no longer on this path.

“I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he explained to Esquire in an interview published Aug. 10. “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in big quantities.”

So, yes, he’ll have a glass of wine. “I can have a few,” the 62-year-old added. “But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”

Equally as private as Pitt, Cooper has opened up about his own sobriety journey.

“I don’t drink or do drugs at all anymore,” the 51-year-old told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “Being sober helps a great deal.”

Giving them up when he was 29, Cooper recalled how there was one particularly eye-opening moment that made him want to change.

“I was at a party and deliberately bashed my head on the concrete floor…like, ‘Hey, look how tough I am!’ And I came up, and blood dripped down,” he detailed. “And then I did it again. I spent the night at St. Vincent’s Hospital with a sock of ice, waiting for them to stitch me up.”

For Cooper, alcohol was what he turned to when he “felt like an outsider” in Hollywood during his younger years.

“I was so concerned what you thought of me, how I was coming across, how I would survive the day. I always felt like an outsider. I just lived in my head,” the A Star Is Born director explained. “I realized I wasn’t going to live up to my potential, and that scared the hell out of me. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m actually gonna ruin my life; I’m really gonna ruin it.'”

While friends tried to help him, Cooper resisted—ignoring their concerns. 

“Part of me believed it, and part of me didn’t,” he added. “But the proof was in the pudding: I’d always gotten up at the crack of dawn, and that was out the window. I remember looking at my life, my apartment, my dogs, and I thought, ‘What’s happening?'”

Ironically, Cooper was already sober for years before landing his big break in The Hangover trilogy, a role that would begin his ascent to the A-list and his struggles with tabloid coverage and endless speculation over his love life, something his friend Pitt (now dating Ines de Ramon) also knows something about.

After high-profile romances with Renée Zellweger, Zoe Saldaña and Suki Waterhouse, Cooper began dating supermodel Irina Shayk in 2015, with the private couple welcoming their first child together, Lea de Seine Shayk Cooper, in 2017.

But after four years together, Cooper and Shayk broke up in June 2019. He and partner Gigi Hadid recently sparked marriage speculation after about three years of dating when they stepped out wearing what looked like wedding bands.

Pitt, meanwhile, shares six children with Jolie: Maddox, 25, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and twins Knox and Vivienne (18)—though some of the kids have dropped their dad’s surname.

But Cooper and Pitt have bond over more than just their personal lives. 

“They have a lot in common and a lot to talk about,” a source told E! News in 2020. “They are both very into music and art. They go to shows together and to see music live when they can.”

They’re also both into sports—as seen when they attended the 2021 U.S. Open together. But when it comes to football, don’t expect them to root for the same team.

Joking Cooper is used to losing the Oscar because “he’s a Philadelphia Eagles fan,” Pitt teased at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in 2024, “Go Chiefs!”

To see more stars you didn’t know were friends, read on.

(A version of this story was originally published Jan 17, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST).