Bradley Cooper on working with Jennifer Lawrence, getting sober

Jennifer Lawrence is one of the hardest working actresses in the business, so it's no surprise that she's managed to squeeze in not one but two films with leading man Bradley Cooper.

We caught up with Cooper, the star of this weekend's "The Words," at the film's premiere on Tuesday, and the 37-year-old actor couldn't stop complimenting the 22-year-old "Hunger Games" star.


Cooper and Lawrence have already teased us with what looks like a very funny performance in November's comedic drama "Silver Linings Playbook," in which Lawrence plays the troubled friend to Cooper's Pat Solitano, a former teacher who moves back home to live with his parents while dealing with bipolar disorder.
They then switch gears in 2013's "Serena," a Depression-era film that focuses on Cooper's timber magnate George Pemberton and what will become of his empire after it's discovered that his wife, Lawrence's titular Serena, can't have kids.

Of his twice-over co-star, “she is incredible," Cooper told us. "I’ve been so lucky to do two movies with her back-to-back. ... She’s the best. I feel like I got in on the ground floor. I’ll be lucky if I work with her again.”
At the rate Lawrence and Cooper are racking up leading roles, the two just might pull that off.
Meanwhile, Cooper's starring with Zoe Saldana in "The Words," in which he plays a novelist who lifts material from another writer's work. What's made a tremendous difference in his life, he tells the Hollywood Reporter, is getting sober.

"I don't drink or do drugs at all anymore," Cooper said, adding that he gave that up years ago when he was 29 after a scary experience at a party in which he purposefully smashed his head into a concrete floor - twice.
"I was so concerned what you thought of me, how I was coming across, how I would survive the day," Cooper told THR. "I always felt like an outsider. I just lived in my head. 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 going to ruin my life.'"
Thankfully, Cooper answered the wake-up call, and will appear in at least six films over the next year, including the two co-starring Lawrence, as well as "The Hangover Part III" and "The Place Beyond the Pines" with Ryan Gosling.

Cooper's "The Words" opens Friday.