Bradley Cooper isn’t just an action star in the movies, he has those same life-saving instincts IRL too!
The Silver Linings Playbook star opened up about the time he was held at knifepoint in October 2019, while he was on his way to pick up his now 4-year-old daughter Lea from school. Recounting the scary experience, the actor told Dax Shepard on Monday’s episode of Armchair Expert:
“I used to walk around New York City all the time with these [headphones] on — this was pre-pandemic — I was on the subway [at] 11:45 to pick Lea downtown at Russian school and I got held up at knifepoint.”
Holy s**t!
Admittedly, the 46-year-old explained that he had gotten “too comfortable in the city,” wearing headphones and not paying close enough attention to his surroundings. When he thought a fan was coming to ask for a photo, he got the shock of a lifetime, sharing:
“It was pretty insane. I realized I had gotten way, way too comfortable in the city. My guard was down. … I was all the way at the end of the subway. Innately, I would just go all the way down to the end. I felt somebody coming up. I thought, Oh they want to take a photo or something. As I turned, I’m up against the post like it’s The French Connection or some s**t, and I turned. I looked down and I see a knife.”
The “nice knife” was around three inches long and had had “some history” behind it. Yikes! Able to find some dark humor in the memory, the A Star Is Born lead added:
“I have my headphones on the whole time. I can’t hear anything. I’m just listening to music. So it’s scored, the whole thing was scored.”
That sounds even more disorienting and stressful!
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Interestingly, the aggressor turned out to be pretty “young.” This revelation seemingly gave The Hangover alum confidence to get out of the situation, he continued:
“I can’t remember [what I was listening to]. I look up, I see the person’s eyes, and I’m taken by how young they are.”
The eight-time Oscar nominee then went against his training, which had taught him never to run from a knife, and instead lifted his elbow and bolted for the exit, recalling:
“I just started booking, just started running. I jumped over the turnstile, hid around the white, tiled entrance to the subway [and] took my phone out. He jumped over, running away. I took a photo of him. Then I chased him up the stairs. He started running up 7th Avenue. I took two more photographs of him.”
Once he was in the clear from the criminal, Cooper tracked down two cops to get help, concluding:
“I ran down two police officers in an SUV, showed them the photograph and I’m, like, talking to them, and the guy kept saying — it was so interesting — he’s like, ‘Are you stabbed?’ I was like, ‘No, no.’ He was like, ‘Check to see if you’re stabbed.’ What happens is people get stabbed and they’re in shock. I looked to see if he was right… And then I got back on the subway and picked up my daughter.”
Thankfully, Bradley made it out of the encounter unharmed, though the situation changed his perspective on navigating the Big Apple moving forward. We’re SO glad his little girl, whom he shares with ex Irina Shayk, wasn’t around for that traumatizing and potentially life-threatening ordeal and that nobody was hurt!
Thoughts, Perezcious readers? Sound OFF in the comments (below)!
[Image via FayesVision/WENN & Movieclips/YouTube]
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