By Chris Lee,
Entertainment Weekly, Oct 31, 2014
Sienna Miller doesn't want to talk about whether or not Bradley Cooper
dies in the end.
In the upcoming biopic American Sniper, he portrays Chris Kyle, the
deadliest marksman in U.S. military history. During Kyle’s four tours in Iraq,
the decorated Navy SEAL had 160 confirmed kills before retiring in 2009. But
his life abruptly ended in 2013 when he was shot by a Marine veteran reportedly
suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (He’s currently awaiting trial.)
When asked if that sad coda to Kyle’s legendary career is included in
director Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of the soldier’s best-selling 2012 memoir,
the British actress demures. “I’m not supposed to say anything,” says Miller,
who portrays Kyle’s wife, Taya. “The film really focuses more on his life than
on his death. That’s what I’m supposed to say.”
Hitting theaters in limited release on Christmas Day, American Sniper
arrives as a late addition to the awards-season scrum with a growing din of
sight-unseen prerelease buzz. Cooper—who also produced the film—packed on
pounds of muscle for the part, practiced shooting live ammunition with real
SEAL teams, and personally promised Kyle (just before his death) to do justice
to his story.
As such, American Sniper showcases Kyle’s overseas deployments where
his courage under fire and pinpoint accuracy earned him the nickname “Legend”
(and, Kyle claimed in his memoir, put a bounty on his head from enemy
insurgents). But the movie also follows its hero home from the battlefield.
“Ultimately, it is a war film,” Miller says. “At the same time, you
have romance: humanity grounded by a love story. The dilemma of life at home, leaving
that high-adrenaline, high-intensity situation behind and trying to be a father
and husband. This is a man whose priorities in life are God, country, and
family—in that order.”
The movie appears set to follow a release pattern similar to
Eastwood’s sports drama Million Dollar Baby, which hit screens in December 2004
and went on to win four Oscars. Various prognosticators are already placing
short odds on Cooper, who’s earned two nominations in the past two years for American
Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook.
“His performance is completely compelling. He’s just unrecognizable,”
Miller says. “He was training four to six hours a day. He put on 40 pounds of
muscle. He looked and sounded like a different person. I’m pretty sure he
didn’t break character for the entire thing. He dived into this completely
head-first. It was an amazing thing to be around.”
Amazing in a completely different way were a pair of butt-hugging
khaki short shorts a bulked-up Cooper was photographed wearing on set that
became an Internet meme earlier this year.
“We did have a laugh about those photos. Funnily enough, those are the
SEALs’ Hell Week shorts,” says Miller, laughing. “They are the Navy SEALs’
training uniform. I guess it’s part of Hell Week to be humiliated to that
degree.”
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