Bradley Cooper opened up about how becoming a dad changed everything for him.
The 49-year-old welcomed his daughter, Lea, with his ex-girlfriend, model Irina Shayk, back in 2017.
The Oscar-nominated actor shared that raising his little girl motivated him to turn his life around, leaving behind his struggles with addiction.
During an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, he emotionally shared: “Honestly, I'm not sure I'd be alive if I wasn't a dad. I don't know what would have happened. I am not sure.”
“I just needed someone to say, like, ‘We're gonna drop this massive anchor’. I'm like, ‘Why? We're speeding! I just got an upgrade on the boat, and I know where the wind's coming in.’
“They're like, ‘No, no, no, there's a tsunami coming in, and you need an anchor and we're gonna drop it. Because this is gonna dictate everything you do from now on. Your DNA is going to tell you that there's something more important than you’.
Cooper emphasised that he made significant changes in his life because he was determined to provide his daughter with a more stable upbringing than he experienced himself.
He revealed that his early years were overshadowed by alcoholism in his family, and he wanted to break that cycle for his daughter's sake.
The Maestro director added: “I'm a father [seeking to do] the least amount of damage I can do to my daughter.
“To have a child not grow up in that way … I want her to have, as much as she can, a foundation that's like 25 feet thick, cement, that she can walk on this earth with. That's the goal.
“I can just feel the safety that she feels. It's so tangible; it's palpable. That is so fulfilling.”
The actor also admitted he didn't initially feel the strong love of a father until a couple of months after Lea’s birth - but when his paternal instinct kicked in, everything changed.
He said: “[For the first couple of months I thought] ‘I don't even know if I really love the kid. It's dope. It's cool. I'm watching this thing morph’... [But] all of a sudden, it's like no question.”
