Bradley Cooper Used Nose Plug to ‘Change His Voice’ for ‘Maestro,’ Reveals Makeup Designer

Bradley Cooper had a few tricks up his sleeve — and nose — when he transformed into Leonard Bernstein.

In addition to playing the legendary conductor in the MaestroCooper is also directing the film, which he co-wrote.

During a press conference at the New York Film Festival on Tuesday (which Cooper, 48, had to forego due to the current actors’ strike), makeup designer Kazu Hiro revealed the ways in which Cooper found the character’s speaking voice.

“We made a nose plug. He wanted to talk and sound like Lenny,” Hiro explained of Cooper’s request to “change his voice.”

The makeup artist gave Cooper a nose plug with different sized holes to wear inside the prosthetic nose, which allowed for a “nasal” outcome. “Lenny’s nose was wider than Bradley’s, so I widened it at the same time to change the shape of his nose and his voice,” he said.

Bernstein, who popularized classical music through television specials and composed for projects such as story from the west sidedied in 1990 at the age of 72. Maestro it also tells the story of his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), and their family life.

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Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in “The Maestro”.

Jason McDonald/Netflix

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Their daughter Jamie noted during the NYFF press conference how Hiro had captured her father’s look, to the hilt. For the scenes near the end of Bernstein’s life, it took Cooper five hours in the make-up chair, Hiro explained.

“I was so impressed with how perfectly you managed to reconstruct my father’s ears,” Jamie said.

Because most of the music is performed live for the camera Maestro, Cooper also had to take a crash course in conducting. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the film’s conducting consultant, explained the challenges of training Cooper to play the “most documented” conductor ever.

“He’s a fantastic actor. His research is incredible, relentless and fantastic and so detailed and deep,” said Nézet-Séguin. “He came to me knowing facial expressions … but how to make it believable so that he can conduct …?”

Bradley Cooper.

Jesse Grant/Getty for Disney

“We didn’t start from scratch. It was more about taking the place where he was and giving him some technical security while giving him the freedom to be Leonard Bernstein as an actor,” added Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Metropolitan Opera.

(Cooper previously said 2022 Diversity interview that “he wanted to be a conductor since childhood. I was obsessed with it, I asked Santa Claus for a baton when I was 8 years old.”)

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Co-writer Josh Singer said that Cooper had personal tapes and tapes of the Bernstein family that he “listened to to his heart’s content”. Singer added, “So much so that he could write things, and I’d say, ‘Oh, what book did you take that from?’ and he would say, ‘No, no, no; I just wrote that.’ ”

“He could literally channel Lenny that way. He went that deep. Bradley was a lightning rod when he came in,” Singer said.

Maestro – which also stars Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Josh Hamilton, Gideon Glick and Miriam Shor – is on Netflix on December 20.

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Source: HIS Education