Bradley Cooper: Hitting My Head On Concrete Helped Me Sober Up
Sept. 5 2012, Published 9:43 a.m. ET
Bradley Cooper has been voted the Sexiest Man Alive, is one of the hottest actors in Hollywood and can call a string of beauties his former flames.
But there was a time in The Hangover star's life when he was making all of the wrong choices and his dreams of superstardom were falling away due to his drinking, using drugs and other scary behavior.
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"I was at a party and deliberately bashed my head on the concrete floor," Bradley told The Hollywood Reporter. "Like, 'Hey, look how tough I am!'"
In a drunken stupor and with blood dripping down his body Bradley pushed it even further.
"I did it again," he recalled. "And I spent the night at St. Vincent's Hospital with a sock of ice, waiting for them to stitch me up."
It was this incident among others that led Bradley to start thinking about getting his life back on track.
"I don't drink or do drugs anymore," he revealed, adding that he got clean eight years ago. "Being sober helps a great deal… When I was still using, I remember looking at my life, my apartment, my dogs, and I thought, 'What's happening?'
"I was so concerned what you thought of me, how I was coming across, how I would survive the day.
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"I always felt like an outsider. I just lived in my head. I realized I wasn't going to live up to my potential, and that scared the hell out of me. I thought, 'Wow, I'm actually gonna ruin my life. I'm really gonna ruin it.'"
Ironically, Bradley's most successful project to date is The Hangover franchise. He is currently starring in The Words, opposite ex-girlfriend Zoë Saldana.
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