Anderson Cooper pays moving tribute to late mother Gloria Vanderbilt: 'It feels very lonely right now'

'With her, with my mom, it was marvellous,' says CNN anchor

Anderson Cooper has paid a moving tribute to his mother Gloria Vanderbilt following her death earlier this week.

The CNN anchor spoke on his network on Friday morning, thanking all those who have sent him messages of condolences.

“My mom would be stunned by all the attention and the kind words that have been written and spoken about her,” he said.

Cooper cited a friend who had described his mother as “her North Star, the person she used as a guide, a kind of light in the darkness”.

“My dad died when I was 10 and my brother when I was 21,” he said in reference to his father Wyatt Emory Cooper, who died during heart surgery in 1978, and his brother Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, who died by suicide in 1988.

“She was the last of my immediate family, the last person who knew me from the beginning.

“They’re all gone and it feels very lonely right now. I hope they are at least together.”

CNN played an excerpt from a video of singer and actress Peggy Lee performing “Is That All There Is?”, which Vanderbilt loved.

With a smile, Cooper added: “Every time it ended, my mom would say, ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ She’d be smiling.

“And it was. With her, with my mom, it was marvellous.”

Vanderbilt, an intrepid heiress, artist and romantic who began her extraordinary life as the “poor little rich girl” of the Great Depression, survived family tragedy and multiple marriages and reigned during the Seventies and Eighties as a designer jeans pioneer, died on Monday at the age of 95.

Cooper said Vanderbilt died at home with friends and family at her side. She had been suffering from advanced stomach cancer, he noted.

Additional reporting by agencies