Bradley Cooper says watching Vince Vaughn shoot Wedding Crashers ‘changed him forever’

Oscar-nominated ‘Maestro’ director had an early role in the R-rated 2005 comedy, opposite Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson

Bradley Cooper has revealed that watching Vince Vaughn on the set of the raucous 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers “changed me forever”.

Cooper appeared opposite Vaughn and Owen Wilson in the R-rated comedy as Sack Lodge, the manipulative boyfriend of Owen Wilson’s love interest Claire (Rachel McAdams)

Speaking during a video call with his fellow SAG Award Best Actor nominees, Cooper was asked about a career-changing moment he’d had with a fellow actor on set and singled out watching Vaughn and learning from his willingness to take risks.

“Up until that point, I was always just trying to get it right on camera. Be present and get it right,” said Cooper, who was recently Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein in music biopic Maestro.

“I’m watching Vince Vaughn destroy a scene, just crush it, and then he wants another take.

“It was the scene where the grandmother is shooting him, takes the gun out and he’s running out. He’s just like, ‘I want to do another one.’ In front of everyone… this huge crew and lights and it’s so nerve-wracking… and it was his willingness to fail.”

“Watching Vince Vaughn… this huge tough guy, funniest guy, quickest guy… I was just in awe of this human, this man just failing, just willing to try anything,” Cooper went on.

Vince Vaughn with Owen Wilson in ‘Wedding Crashers’ (Richard Cartwright/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/Shutterstock)

“At some point he was just scatting and caught onto this thing and was doing this song. I loved seeing it, but clearly it wasn’t working. But it didn’t even matter.

“It was all of us watching this artist just explore with complete abandon. It was like a diamond through the middle of my head going, ‘That’s it! That freedom to just be absolutely willing to fail.’ It changed me forever. That was the moment.”

Bradley Cooper (left) and Vince Vaughn (Getty)

Four years after Wedding Crashers, Cooper took the leading role in Todd Phillips’s booze-fuelled frat boy comedy The Hangover which spawned a wildly successful trilogy.

The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab recently profiled the life of the complex, ‘amazingly charismatic’ and very private superstar.

Last week, Cooper recalled taking his Maestro co-star Carey Mulligan to the emergency room in a “dramatic” first meeting.

“Carey was in a one-woman show, and I went backstage to meet her and realised something was not right and I insisted on taking her to the emergency room,” Cooper recalled during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

Mulligan explained that “during the show, a bit of set hit me on the head”.

“I carried on but when it was over, I started crying and thought I was a goner,” she said. “I was sobbing on the floor when Bradley turned up and, realising I wasn’t okay, he took me to hospital.”

She quipped: “You can imagine how delighted the nurse was!”

Maestro is out now on Netflix.