Bradley Cooper was so committed to staying in character during the filming of his upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, that he spent five-hour sessions in makeup for the parts of the movie when he appeared as the composer in his 70s.
While speaking at the New York Film Festival on Monday (October 2nd), Oscar-winning makeup artist Kazu Hiro said (via Entertainment Weekly) that Cooper also moved up the film’s already-early call times to 1:00 a.m. toward the end of filming to ensure he would only appear in front of the cast and crew while fully transformed — controversial prosthetic nose and all.
“The last stage, he had covered pretty much everywhere, the bodysuit and arms. That took over five hours,” Hiro recalled. “Our call time was 1 in the morning. The other thing was he wanted makeup to be finished before the crew call, so he would appear as Lenny to set up the shoot and everything. That also kind of made our call time two hours earlier than normal, so that was quite tough.”
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Hiro went on to explain how the process took longer as Cooper portrayed Bernstein over the decades. To start, it took two-and-a-half hours to make the actor appear as Bernstein in his 20s. “[We had to] keep adding because as he gets older, we had to add more elements,” he said. “The younger stage was the nose and lips and chin and a wig. After the third stage, he started having cheek and neck [additions.]”
Bernstein’s children Jamie, Alexander, and Nina praised Hiro’s work in an interview with Variety. “In some pictures, we could tell a little bit that it was Bradley, but there were certain photographs where we would go, ‘Oh my God!’” Jamie Bernstein said. “It was so amazingly perfect.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Hiro and other members of the Maestro creative team did not address the controversy around Cooper’s large prosthetic nose in the film. Back in August, however, Bernstein’s children released a statement in support of the actor, saying they were “perfectly fine” with Cooper’s heavy use of makeup. They added that they were “certain” that their father would have been as well.
Maestro stars Cooper opposite Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife Felicia María Cohn Montealegre Bernstein. It was directed by Cooper from a script he co-wrote with Josh Singer, while Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg served as producers. The film also features Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman, Josh Hamilton, Scott Ellis, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Alexa Swinton, and Miriam Shor.
The biopic will play in select theaters beginning November 22nd ahead of its Netflix debut on December 20th.
