Chris Cooper: The WWTW Interview

Chris Cooper’s transition from stage actor to Oscar winner came courtesy of marital pragmatism.

Cooper was working in theater and didn’t have much interest in television or film. When he married his wife, Marianne Leone, his priorities shifted.

“We were living in a sixth-floor walkup on a shoestring. She pushed me toward film and I’ll be forever grateful for her,” says Cooper, who in person is as intense and focused as he appears on screen. Cooper’s latest film bottles that intensity in a diabolical direction.

In the period thriller “Married Life,” (opening wide March 28) he plays Harry, a married man having an affair with a lovely widow (Rachel McAdams). Harry can’t bear the thought of putting his wife (Patricia Clarkson) through a painful divorce. So he plans what he thinks is the most gentle solution. He’ll put her out of her misery - a permanent divorce, if you will.

“He was narcissistic enough to believe he was so important in his wife’s world that she couldn’t live without him,” says Cooper, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 2003's "Adaptation." The actor drew upon his recollection of his grandparents’ generation to flavor Harry's warped thinking.

“Divorce was out of the question … it was too much of an embarrassment. That’s the position he came from,” he says. Cooper says shooting “Married Life” was much less intense than with “Breach,” the unsung 2007 drama about disgraced FBI agent Robert Hanssen.

“I enjoyed the depths that I found myself going for for ‘Breach,’” he says. “Married Life” offered its own intense scenarios off-screen. Director Ira Sachs (“Forty Shades of Blue”) arranged for one-on-one dinners between his leads to build a sense of attachment for the film.

“Pierce and I shared a lot over dinner. Similar things happened to us in real life. It was just a nice, extra intimacy,” Cooper says. Brosnan lost his wife, Cassandra Harris, to ovarian cancer in 1991, while Cooper’s son, 17-year-old son, Jesse, died of complications from cerebral palsy in 2005. The dinners weren’t necessary for some parts of his performance.

“It wasn’t too hard to be totally captivated by Rachel McAdams,” he says dryly.

Tomorrow: Cooper talks about the shock and awe of working with "The Kingdom" director Peter Berg.

(Photo: Chris Cooper strikes an imperious pose in "Married Life")