Bradley Cooper Makes Rare Comment About Fatherhood and Daughter Lea

Bradley Cooper is opening up about fatherhood. In a rare moment, during an upcoming episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge, the actor says he hopes to "unburden" his six-year-old daughter.

Cooper co-parents his daughter, Lea De Seine, with ex-girlfriend Irina Shayk.

The 48-year-old star says the death of his own father, Charles, affected his parenting style and approach to life.

"I mean you learn from your predecessor’s mistakes and I’ll make tons that hopefully Lea will learn from and then being rigorous with myself to grow," he tells Grylls in a clip shared by People on Thursday. "To help unburden her with any of my bulls**t."

"That’s one of the best things you can do for Lea, isn’t it?" Grylls asks.

"And for me," the actor responds, adding, "It’s for me too. It just makes life much better."

Cooper tells Grylls he wishes his father, who lost his battle with lung cancer in 2011, was still alive today.

"Yeah, I wish my dad was around to enjoy more of it, but we all recognize how lucky we’ve been," says Cooper. "It was a blessing though. He gave me a huge gift; he died in my arms. To see that kind of factual example of mortality."

"Did that change how you look at things?" Grylls asks, to which Cooper responds, "Oh yeah. Some ways for the worst. I definitely had a nihilistic attitude after, for a little bit. Just like, wow I’m gonna die."

"It was not great for a little bit until I realized I had to just embrace who I actually am and try to find peace with that. And then it sorta evened out," he admits.

Since welcoming their child, both Shayk and Cooper have kept Lea largely out of the spotlight. After four years, the duo called it quits in 2019 but remain close friends and co-parents. In April, Shayk opened up about what they are teaching their daughter about beauty.

"Every time we send her to school, we’re like, 'Just remember kindness and love.' So I think that’s what true beauty is," the supermodel told Harper's Bazaar. "It’s not about putting on masks, putting on makeup, brushing your hair, putting on nice clothes. With TikTok and Instagram and social media, my daughter is growing up in a different environment than I grew up in, so sometimes it kind of scares me. But most important is teaching our daughter bigger values than being pretty on the outside."

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