Most famously, it was made again during the 1970s and starred Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand as the cynical old rock star who encounters an up-and-coming singing talent and moulds her into a household name, living vicariously through her while battling with his own substance abuse. The 2018 version was very much a labour of love for Cooper, who starred in it with Lady Gaga but also directed, co-wrote and co-produced the movie in a sign of what was to come with his solo effort Maestro a few years later. 

The role required not just a fine acting performance but also playing the guitar and singing, with songs specially written for the film by the likes of Lukas Nelson, son of Willie, Cooper and Gaga herself. Cooper trained for more than two years with vocal coaches, and to hone his guitar skills, he headed to Seattle in order to spend some time with the Pearl Jam frontman, looking for advice. 

The actor recalled, “I spent four or five days with him, and I asked him 9,000 questions. And he gave me minor, little things that only musicians know about what to do, just aesthetically and the inner workings.”

It was a creative partnership that blossomed into a friendship; over the next few years, after the movie’s release, Cooper would occasionally appear onstage with Vedder to provide backing vocals, while the singer would also perform songs from A Star is Born on his solo tours. But his initial reaction to Cooper’s idea of making the movie and playing a grizzled, addicted, down-on-his-luck rock star was not a wholly positive one, regarding which the star said, “He thought it was crazy I was going to do this movie. He was like, ‘What? Bro, don’t do that’”.

Fortunately, Cooper ignored those misgivings and made it anyway, and the film became a huge global smash, with not only the soundtrack album going platinum, but one of the songs won an Academy Award, and the movie itself fared even better. It brought in half a billion dollars at the box office, earned eight Oscar nominations and several nominations for his directing as well. 

Although Cooper’s Maestro, about the composer Leonard Bernstein, failed to scale such heights in 2023, it still went down well with critics and again scooped multiple Oscar nominations. He has several major movies in the works over the next year or so, not least a sequel to Michael Mann’s classic ’90s thriller Heat, plus an Ocean’s 11 sequel with Margot Robbie and a reboot of Steve McQueen’s 1968 classic Bullitt, to remain on the Oscars shoutouts list for a while.

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