Very few men have the upper hand on Robert DeNiro and his characters, from “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” to “Meet the Parents.” But in “Limitless,” Bradley Cooper was handed a rare opportunity to take the “Heat” actor down with a little name-calling.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t enjoyable” calling DeNiro’s character Carl Van Loon “my b*tch,” Cooper said in his interview with HitFix.
It’s one of the few major perks of playing the smartest man on the planet: Cooper’s character Eddie Morra becomes an addict to a pill that expands the brain’s capacity to function and process to 100%. The audience can’t help but imagine what one could do with such intelligence. But Cooper thinks he’d just keep right on acting if he’d stumbled upon such a formula.
So far as we know, no such drug exists; in the meantime, however, there’s always growing brain-power the old-fashioned way, from school. The “Hangover” actor was primed with his education at Villanova, then Georgetown, then achieving his Masters at NYU.
For Cooper, acting school was “essential,” but he doesn’t think that ever actor needs it.
Aside from the excitement of learning a little Chinese, Italian and financial microeconomics for his part in “Limitless,” the actor is amped for another future project, “The Hangover 2.” Early metrics indicate that, while the movie is still three months out from hitting theaters, audiences have heard about the movie and are eager to go: analytically, enthusiasm for the release is through the roof.
“I’m excited, to know there may be a good chance people will come to a movie you’ve done,” Cooper smiled.
“Limitless” is in theaters Friday (March 18).