Who's next for Bradley?

So, a few years ago I managed a bit of staggering brilliance when I created a quantitative scale ranking possible future boyfriends for Natalie Portman. Read the genius here. I thought it might be fun to do the same thing for Bradley Cooper since he finally ditched that waxy, squinty, drawn-looking blonde that used to look something like Renee Zellweger. 

The Frisky had the same idea this morning, but reading their slightly weak list of generic A- and B-listers who seem like cop-out picks, I thought I'd get a little more scientific. You know -- enlist Google and IMDB n' stuff. 

Here's the Super Special Strategy:

First, we make gross generalizations about Mr Cooper.

He's a decently good-looking guy who has no idea what to do with his hair and lacks much fashion sense when left to his own devices.

He plays an asshole really well (leading us to believe perhaps he's not acting all that well and he really is an asshole). He also plays meek and dweeby really well (leading us to believe perhaps he's not acting all that well and he really is meek and dweeby). So, he's either a dork or a douche or a particularly versatile actor... hard to tell which.

He's Georgetown educated (an "honors english" student - he gets points there), he pursued a Masters of Fine Arts program at the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. So, he values his craft, he's not afraid of academia, he spent time learning.

He's having his "hot right now" career moment but I feel like he's earned it - he's paid his dues, worked the trenches with small bit parts in old TV shows.

Aside from one short-lived, 4-month marriage to actress Jennifer Esposito about which he will say little more than that it was "an experience" he claims to be a romantic at heart who plans to "mate for life." So, more slightly mixed (or difficult to interpret) messages there. Admirably, however, he plays it quite close to the vest with his personal life, opting not to comment on "romances in progress."

He has one nasty mouth in magazine interviews - comes off rather like he's trying too hard - or like he's afraid of being taken as soft so he tries particularly hard to seem edgy, world weary, tormented, tough. So, I suspect under all of the four-letter words, he's insecure. Actually, witness this snippet from Details magazine that pretty well proves my points:

During one shoot for The A-Team in Vancouver, he says, "me and Liam Neeson were supposed to be helicoptering down into Baghdad with fucking guns and the wind machines blowing. So I'm hanging on and there's fucking Liam Neeson and I got a gun and there's music playing and it's as if I'm making a movie. But actually I am making a movie. It was so fucked-up. It was very surreal."


It's a word he uses a lot. It was surreal to see himself turned into a brick-house hunk for The A-Team, which features lots of shots of his sweaty, bulging biceps and concrete pecs. "I had to literally transform my body," he explains—for six months prior to filming and during the shoot, the already fitness-obsessed actor cut out sugar, salt, and flour and underwent grueling two-hour workouts with a trainer every day.

"As the movie progressed, I got in increasingly better shape," he says. "There's this one fight scene with Liam Neeson toward the end, where it's, like, the apex of the work. We finished and Joe's like, 'Brother, come here, look at this,' and he played it back, and I swear to God, it looked like my head was digitally superimposed onto someone else's body.

"I was like, 'This cannot be me—that's the way I look?' " Cooper says. "It was so fucking surreal, 'cause as a kid I only fantasized about looking that way. Remember Soloflex commercials? That was huge when I was a kid. It was like, 'I wanna be the Soloflex guy. Mom, can we get the Soloflex?' "

And yet, even toned and trained into superhuman shape, Cooper still fixated on his physical imperfections—or at least those he perceived. "Even in that body I'm in," he says, "I still saw them, absolutely." He still felt a bit like the Elephant Man. "Oh, sh*t," he says, laughing again. "This is going to be like, 'What a f*cking asshole. Oh, really, you feel like f*cking Elephant Man?'"

So, we've got the Bradley ground covered, now let's proceed to the next phase of the Super Special Strategy:

We decide whether he's better off with someone just like him, or dramatically different from him.

In this case, I'm thinking he's probably going to be better off with ladies of a similar bent. Er, as I did with Natalie Portman, I googled a list of the Bradley Personality Gross Generalizations. Searched for "insecure educated actresses with bad language." Retrieved: Kristen Stewart.

Hmmmm. Okay, she's having a hot-right-now couple of years. Verdict on whether she's a good actress or just a girl perpetually tagged to play someone like herself is up in the air. Her hair is generally bad. Her style is questionable. She gives interviews where she tries to sound wise and worldly and usually just ends up sounding like a high school kid who got her hands on some Vonnegut or Steinbeck. Which she did. She seems to like to read. That's as much as I can give her on the "educated" front - she's young and hasn't hit college yet so not sure if she's going to decide to go the Smart Actress route or the "I'm rich as sin, who needs that stuff" route.

And there's that small matter of "she's young AND already in a relationship." So, while superficially K-Stew might seem decently similar, the age and availability factor drops her on the Bradley's Next Girl Meter (BNGM). On a scale of 10 I'd give her a 5. I like Bradley with someone closer to his age (36).

That's the third part of my Strategy, by the way. The numeric ranking.

So, let's think about women he's dated in the past to point us in a particular aesthetic direction. There were several years with Renee (fair, blonde, waifish). Jennifer Esposito was athletic and Latin. He was "reportedly" linked with Jennifer Aniston briefly (blonde and athletic) and with Sandra Bullock (fair-skinned, brunette, fit). Okay - so, while he doesn't have an obvious inclination to blondes, or a tendancy to spring for the exotic-looking complexions, he likes his ladies in good shape. Nice abs and upper arms.

Okay. We're looking for a lady who likes the gym, has probably been to college, who's career is on the upswing and who is in it for the long term. I'm inclined to want to match him up with someone who has slightly more immediate name recognition than he does because I get this slight "social climber" vibe from him. Like he's not above using a dating relationship to elevate his fame status. Like he's insecure enough he thinks he has to talk a big game and date a big name to feel relevant. But not someone likely to completely overshadow him, because that would leave mister "body image issues" feeling like he's been left behind. He'd feel emasculated.

In that case: a fit and bookish A-lister who would get him past any velvet rope.

Anne Hathaway?

She's pretty A-list right now, but she also manages to stay relatively paparazzi-free (I get the feeling that's important to the Coop). We didn't see him pap'd during most of his relationship with Renee outside of a few shots of them leaving the gym. Frankly, I wondered if the entire extent of their courtship wasn't just a series of Stairmaster dates and medicine ball tosses while making sexy eyes at each other. Anne is immediately recognizable. Seems to take acting seriously. Seems to have toiled for years in the land of goofy, saccharine tween movies before making her mark on the grown-up world. Strikes me as smart. Maybe too smart for Bradley. Maybe too high strung and excited, too. But moving in the right direction. Closer to his age. Single (as far as I know right now). At the top of her game. Seems reasonably baggage free, down to be someone's one and only.

We'll give Annie an 8 on the BNGM. Not bad, but not quite perfect because she has the potential to eclipse him on the celebrity scale.

You know who else is a good-looking actor at the top of their game, certifiably famous but low-key with a smart sense of humor, bad hair, bad fashion, great body who paid their dues with a lot of small bit work before striking it big?

Jon Hamm.

I'm giving the Hamm a 9 on the BNGM meter. Only problem: he's not single. But they'd look good together.

Okay, so we're not quite there yet.

How about Charlize Theron?

Ooh, this could be good. See, I like Charlize. She's beautiful. Seems low-key, strikes me as smart, is pretty widely adored by men and women alike (versus someone like Jessica Alba who's universally gorgeous but universally loathed by women for her whiny "I'm not pretty, I don't get it" schtick that feels so fake). She's precisely his age. She's in fantastic physical shape. She makes some questionable style decisions but has that modeling background that makes most of her missteps forgivable (so, she could teach him a thing or two about looking good - help him figure out his hair issue). She didn't attend university proper, BUT she studied ballet at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City, so she's spent time honing her craft in NYC just like Cooper did.

She's single. Moreover, she seems like she needs to have a good time. She dabbled in some Sean Penn dates after her split with the long term boyfriend Stuart Townsend (long term - good thing - she seems to want to settle down). She was rumoured to have hooked up (or been pursued by) Jeremy Renner, she dated Stephen Jenkins for awhile, so she, like Bradley, doesn't have a hard and fast "type" that she always dates.

They're both sort of golden and glowing and sun-kissed and would look killer together on a red carpet (or during a post-yoga dash to the local Starbucks).

I'm giving Charlize a 10. Now, go forth and date. Because I said so. And because I'm Patti Stanger-brilliant at these match-ups.