As the first images from Bradley Cooper’s new film Maestro trickled in earlier this year, one thing stuck out above all else: his nose. The fake nose that Bradley Cooper wore to portray Leonard Bernstein seemed to stretch beyond the boundaries of acceptable movie prosthetics. It was a gargantuan thing that – despite the assurances of Bernstein’s family – was immediately labelled as anti-semitic by the internet. At the very least, the nose deserved a best supporting actor nomination.
The furore grew so loud that even Bradley Cooper himself has had to weigh in on the matter, claiming that his conk was essential for balancing out the rest of his facial prosthetics. “I thought, ‘Maybe we don’t need to do it,’ but it’s all about balance, and, you know, my lips are nothing like Lenny’s, and my chin. And so we had that, and it just didn’t look right [without the nose]”.
