Description:
Christopher Walton Cooper was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Mary Ann (Walton), a homemaker, and Charles Sherwood Cooper, a cattleman and internist who served as a doctor in the US Air Force. His parents were from Texas, where Cooper was raised.
Educated at the University of Missouri school of drama, Cooper appeared on Broadway in "Of the Fields Lately (1980)", and off-Broadway in "The Ballad of Soapy Smith (1983)" and "A Different Moon (1983)". He debuted in films in the John Sayles movie Matewan (1987). Although his performance was well received, the picture was not successful. Other films he has appeared in include Guilty by Suspicion (1991), Money Train (1995) and A Time to Kill (1996). On television, Cooper has been featured in the mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) and Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), as July Johnson. He has also appeared in a number of television movies. In 1996, he starred in his third John Sayles movie, Lone Star (1996), where he plays Sam Deeds, the sheriff whose lawman father becomes a posthumous suspect in a murder investigation.
Cooper married actress/producer/scriptwriter Marianne Leone on July 8, 1983. They have one child, a son Jesse, who died on January 3, 2005 at the age of 17, of natural causes related to cerebral palsy. Jesse Cooper inspired his mother to author the script for the film "Conquistadora." It relates the true story of Mary Somoza, the mother of twins with cerebral palsy, who fought the educational system to provide the best education possible for her children.
Birthday
July 9, 1951
Born In
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Height
178 cm
Parents
Mary Ann Cooper (Walton)
Children
Jesse Cooper
Trivia
Did not make his first screen appearance until he was thirty-six years old.
Quotes
(On landing his role in Matewan) That was my first feature film, but it came in kind of an interesting way. My wife [Marianne] was also an actor. When we were living in New York, she answered a backstage ad for an NYU student's film, and that turned out to be Nancy Savoca. So Marianne did Nancy's half-hour junior black-and-white piece. Then she and Nancy and Rich, Nancy's husband-we all four became real good friends from that experience. Then Nancy worked on Brother From Another Planet when John [Sayles] was shooting that. And she was aware that John beforehand had lost financing. He wanted to do Matewan, but lost the financing, so he went on to do Brother From Another Planet. So Nancy gave John my name, and said, "When the time comes for Matewan, take a look at this guy." So that's kind of how that came about. It was an audition in midtown. I went up and read a couple of scenes. And then some months passed. I went to London to do a West End production with Harold Pinter-it was a Tennessee Williams play, Sweet Bird Of Youth, directed by Harold Pinter and starring Lauren Bacall. So in the seven months that I was over in England, news came. I got a callback to read some more scenes. So we did the Sunday matinée, and I had to get on a plane, fly to the States, do the audition, get back on the plane, fly back for Tuesday night's performance. I had virtually noooo sleep. I was really on a high just in anticipation of the audition. And then during that Tuesday-night performance, I came really, really close to fainting onstage because I was so tuckered.
Trademarks
Usually plays characters that are associated with the government (including the military), politics, or agencies. See: The Bourne Identity (2002), Silver City (2004), Syriana (2005), Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Jarhead (2005), The Patriot (2000), American Beauty (1999), Breach (2007).
