Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” scored seven nominations on the 2024 Oscars together with absolute best make-up and hairstyling — regardless of receiving backlash over the actor’s prosthetic nostril.
Cooper, 48, used to be first criticized for dressed in a big, faux schnoz within the Leonard Bernstein biopic in Would possibly 2022 after footage from the set went viral on-line.
On the time, many social media customers slammed Cooper, who used to be raised Catholic and is of Irish-Italian descent, for furthering a “damaging stereotype” through dressed in the prosthetic.
“Who the f–k made the conscious decision to say ‘oh yes, we’ll put a prosthetic nose on a non-jewish man to play a jewish person, brilliant idea, definitely not anti-semitic or a damaging stereotype in any way,” one person wrote on X (previously Twitter) in Would possibly 2022.
“Or you could…hire an old Jewish actor…instead of slapping on a prosthetic nose? this some antisemitic bulls–t that he’ll win an Oscar for,” every other added.
The uproar used to be reignited a 12 months later when the primary teaser for the movie — which is described as a “fearless love story” between the famed composer and his spouse, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (performed through Carey Mulligan) — dropped in August.
On the time, Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman advised Web page Six: “If Bradley Cooper is able to play the Elephant Man without any prosthetics, he should be able to play a Jewish man without any need for prosthetics — especially a ‘Jewish’ nose.”
She endured, “If he needs to wear a prosthetic nose then that is, to me and many others, the equivalent of blackface or yellowface.”
On the other hand, Jewish “Leopoldstadt” actor Joshua Malina driven again in opposition to the opinions, telling us that he did “not take issue with Bradley Cooper being made to look like a real person.”
“Jews do not, in fact, have bigger noses than other people do; Leonard Bernstein did,” he stated. “That’s the end of the story for me.”
Bernstein used to be born to Russian Jewish immigrants in 1918 and famously composed “West Side Story.” The Netflix movie spanned the sooner years of his existence till his dying in 1990.
Following the combined response, Bernstein’s real-life youngsters Jamie Alexander and Nina Bernstein penned a letter explaining that they “were touched” through the “depth” of Cooper’s “commitment” to taking part in their father.
“It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations of misunderstandings of his efforts,” they wrote. “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that.”
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In addition they famous that their dad “would have been fine with it as well.”
Cooper — who starred in and directed the Steven Spielberg- and Martin Scorsese-produced movie — additionally defended his resolution all the way through an interview with CBS’ Gayle King in November.
“The truth is … I’d done this whole process out of love, and it’s so clear to me where I come from,” he stated.
Whilst Cooper to begin with concept he wouldn’t “need” the prosthetic as a result of his nostril used to be already “very similar” to Bernstein’s, he later made up our minds it used to be essential to seem extra just like the musical genius.
He famous that faces are “all about balance,” and whilst their noses have been identical, his “lips” and “chin” are “nothing like Lenny’s,” so “it just didn’t look right” with out the enhancement.
Cooper additionally defined that the movie used minimum prosthetics when he performed Bernstein in his more youthful years; then again, that they had so as to add extra to replicate the growing old procedure because the timeline complicated.
“By the time he’s older, it’s the whole face [that had prosthetics], so we just had to do it,” he stated. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t believe he was a human being.”
In conjunction with absolute best make-up, “Maestro” is nominated for absolute best actor, absolute best actress, absolute best image, absolute best authentic screenplay, absolute best cinematography and absolute best sound.