REAL LIFE
To dust off an old slogan, Chris Cooper has made it in Massachusetts.
Since moving to Kingston with his wife, Plymouth native Marianne Leone of “Sopranos” fame, the chameleon actor with the slow Midwestern drawl has risen from critic favorite to one of the most esteemed character actors in the business. And he has the Oscar to prove it.
The beauty is that he hasn’t let an ounce of the gallons of adoration go to his sharp-witted brain. He remains a simple, unassuming pragmatist who loves his wife, cares about the environment and stays active in community affairs.
Chalk that up to the solid Midwestern values he absorbed growing up in Kansas City. He’s about as un-Hollywood as you can get in an age of rampant narcissism.
He, in all respects of the term, is an ideal role model. Not just for young actors, but for everyone who believes in working hard to hone your talents.
He’s also a prime example of patience rewarded, achieving fame not in his teens and 20s, an age when so many stars self-destruct, but in his middle 30s, when he had his head screwed on straight and resigned himself to the fact that the actor always takes a backseat to the character.
He credits that to the 15 years he spent working in the New York theater.
“It was a great preparation for film,” Cooper said during a recent interview to promote his latest film, “Married Life.” “When I talk to younger people I always stress start out in theater; make your mistakes each night and develop a technique you can depend on.”
True to his philosophy, actors don’t get more dependable than Cooper, who has nary a stinker on his illustrious résumé. Some may say that’s because he’s a great judge of material, but others will contend that he, not the scripts, is responsible.
He’s much too modest to subscribe to the latter, but if that weren’t true, why are so many top directors demanding his services? People like Doug Liman, Spike Jonez, Sam Mendes, Paul Greengrass and, of course, John Sayles, a filmmaker integral to Cooper’s rise to fame.
“He gave me my first film job,” Cooper said of the critically acclaimed 1987 coal-mining epic “Matewan.” “If you’re starting out in the business, I can’t think of a better example (than Sayles) to understand how the business works and how much work it involves.
“He and Maggie (Sayles’ longtime romantic partner Maggie Renzi) remain dear, dear friends. We travel together, we spend Christmases together and I think down the road we’ll work together again.”
The filmmaker he’s currently working under is Ira Sachs, the writer-director of “Married Life,” a darkly comedic thriller set in 1949 that features Cooper as a hangdog businessman plotting to kill his wife (Patricia Clarkson) in order to spare her the pain and embarrassment of telling her he plans to run off with his 25-year-old mistress (Rachel McAdams).
The film is a bit of a throwback to the wink-and-a-nudge mischief that underscored some of the greatest Hitchcock pictures, and Cooper has a grand time playing it for subtle laughs. He even holds his own opposite Pierce Brosnan, cast as Cooper’s best friend and rival for McAdams’ affections.
They make for a dynamic duo and movie fans will undoubtedly enjoy the meshing of the James Bond of old and the man intricately connected to the neo-Bond, Jason Bourne, even though Cooper’s corrupt spy was offed in the first of the three “Bourne” pictures.
It was as another spook, real-life double agent Robert Hanssen, that earned Cooper his highest praise since winning the Oscar for “Adaptation.” But “Breach,” which co-starred Ryan Phillippe and Laura Linney, shockingly slipped from the minds of Academy voters, who failed to nominate Cooper earlier this year.
“Maybe if it hadn’t come out so early in the year (February), it might have been remembered. But then you see why they hold things until the end of the year,” Cooper said with a hint of disappointment.
Yet, he’s not bitter. How can he be with one of those little gold fellas already on his shelf serving as a reminder of what he fondly remembers as “an enjoyable, memorable night.”
The Oscar certainly put him in select company, a group that includes another Cooper to whom he is often compared, Gary Cooper.
The comparisons are endless. Both played sheriffs traveling to their own drummers, Chris in “Lone Star,” Gary in “High Noon.” Both have craggy, expressive faces and, of course, their laconic, but mesmerizing speech patterns.
“I certainly don’t take offense to it,” Cooper said of the comparison.
They also share modest upbringings in less-than-glam surroundings, Montana for the elder Cooper and Kansas City for Chris, who spent much of his youth drifting through various jobs.
The most notable was his work as a carpenter’s assistant during the construction of Arrowhead and Royals stadiums in Kansas City.
“I was a very mediocre student in high school, and college scared me,” Cooper recalled. “So I joined the Coast Guard and worked at the stadium. And so after a couple years’ break, I was ready to go back to school and oddly enough did pretty well.”
It was while attending the University of Missouri that Cooper discovered his love of acting. And he wasted little time moving to New York to forge his career.
“My first love was theater, so where are you going to go but New York?” he said, later adding that he’d like to return to Broadway.
But only if his co-star is his wife, the woman he credits for pushing him toward film all those years ago. For that, he said, “I’m exceedingly grateful.”
Reach Al Alexander at aalexander@ledger.com.