Bradley Cooper is headed to Washington.
The actor isn’t making a political run, however. Instead he is a guest of President Barack Obama at the White House’s National Conference on Mental Health.
It is a cause close to Cooper’s heart. Since starring as a man struggled with Bipolar disorder in last year’s Silver Linings Playbook , Cooper has taken the cause of mental health very seriously. He has advocated for mental health issues in interviews and attended events to benefit mental health causes.
This cause already brought Bradley Cooper to Washington once this year. In January he held a question and answer session for about 50 military veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which followed a screening of Silver Linings Playbook .
In the meantime, Cooper has signed on for a new acting role connected to both the military and mental health. He will portray Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper documented in American military history.
Cooper had reportedly been angling for the role for quite some time, and officially signed on to play the late American hero in a 2014 movie about his life and military exploits.The project also has some other star power — Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct.
The Chris Kyle movie will be a film adaptation of his 2012 biography, American Sniper , and marks Spielberg’s follow-up to the 2012 film Lincoln.
The Chris Kyle movie also ties in to Bradley Cooper’s interest in mental health. Kyle helped organize a project that worked with returning veterans suffering the emotional toll of war.
Kyle was killed earlier this year by one of the men involved in the project. Kyle and another person had taken the man to a shooting range as part of the program, and the man would go on to shoot and kill Kyle.
Bradley Cooper has also signed on as a producer of the Chris Kyle movie.