Career
Cooper's early performances include Matewan, the 1987 picture by John Sayles; the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove; and the 1990 picture Thousand Pieces of Gold, which is based on the novel of the same title, and Bed of Lies opposite Susan Dey.
Some of his more notable later performances include: Money Train, as a psychotic pyromaniac who terrifies toll booth operators; Lone Star, in a rare leading role as a Texas sheriff charged with solving a decades-old case; as Deputy Dwayne Looney in director Joel Schumacher's 1996 film A Time to Kill (based on the John Grisham novel); and as a homophobic Marine Corps colonel in American Beauty, a role that garnered him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. To get into character, Cooper said he "depended on a friend who’d fought in Vietnam. I asked him to go deep. What would this man have done? What would be on his walls? On his desk?"
In 2000, Cooper played Colonel Harry Burwell (inspired by "Lighthorse Harry" Lee) in The Patriot. He was nominated for another Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe Award in 2003 for playing the role of John Laroche in Adaptation. In 2002, Cooper also appeared in The Bourne Identity as a ruthless CIA special ops director, a role he reprised (in flashbacks) in The Bourne Supremacy. He received another Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his supporting role as racehorse trainer Tom Smith in Seabiscuit. Cooper also played a major part in The Horse Whisperer alongside actor - director Robert Redford. Cooper has played his share of low-key heroic and non-heroic types. In 2005, for example, he starred in Silver City, playing an inept Republican gubernatorial candidate, a character noted for similarities to U.S. President George W. Bush.
Cooper was generally busy in 2005, appearing in three acclaimed films: Jarhead (which reunited him with American Beauty director Sam Mendes and October Sky actor Jake Gyllenhaal); Capote; and Syriana.
He also acted in the thriller Breach, playing real-life FBI agent and traitor Robert Hanssen. Cooper commented that Breach was "the first studio film where they've considered me the lead ". In 2007, he appeared as a government agent in dangerous territory in the action thriller The Kingdom and most recently voiced the character Douglas in the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are (2009).
At the 2010 Sundance film festival, Cooper appeared alongside Ben Affleck in the drama, The Company Men, in which early reviews praised Cooper's performance as "pitch-perfect".
Read more about this topic: Chris Cooper (actor)
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