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Bradley Cooper was pretty close to quitting The Place Beyond the Pines due to a script rewrite.
THR reported that the Maestro actor needed some convincing to stay on set weeks before filming started on the 2013 crime drama.
Director Derek Cianfrance shed light on all of this regarding the 2013 film. Apparently, he brought in Darius Marder, a screenwriter, to rewrite the whole movie right before beginning to film. And Cooper wasn't having it.
In the movie, Bradley played Avery, a cop who killed Luke, a thief (Ryan Gosling). The film also starred Eva Mendes as Romina.
Why Bradley Cooper almost didn't film The Place Beyond the Pines
In an interview with IndieWire, Cianfrance elaborated on why the A Star Is Born actor almost bailed utterly.
The director said, “I had given [Marder] the script and he had a lot of notes for it, and I kind of agreed with a lot of what he was saying. And so we rewrote every word from 10 weeks to six weeks. I remember giving Bradley Cooper the copy of The Place Beyond the Pines, the new script, and getting a voice message from him saying, ‘Bro, I just want to let you know I read the new draft, and I'm out.'”
Cianfance added, “He was like, ‘That's not the movie that we had signed up to do.'”
After that heartwrenching message, the director sprang into action.
“I was moving my family up to Schenectady the next day [to be on location], and the whole crew was coming up there,” he continued. “I had all the money anyway. I was like, ‘Can I come talk to you?' So I went up to Montreal, and I had a long conversation with him from midnight to 3:30 in the morning where I got him back on. It was only in the last five minutes [when I convinced him[. I think he just got tired. He wanted to go to bed.”
Whatever conspired that early in the morning did the trick, and Bradley starred in the film. It earned $21.4M in the U.S. and Canada and a worldwide total of $47.1M. With a budget of $15M, that's not too shabby. Plus, the critical response to the film was generally positive.
The director and Cooper were set to team up again for 2015's Burnt, but the project wasn't to come to fruition.
The director said, “It just wasn't my movie to make.” However, Bradley Cooper ended up starring in the film, playing Adam Jones, a disgraced Michelin chef who was focused on redemption.
It shows that some persuasion can pay off. Also, it might not be best to rewrite a script for professional actors like Cooper before shooting. Sometimes, that might not sit too well.
