Cynthia Nixon reveals cheeky lie Bradley Cooper told to land Sex and the City role

Bradley Cooper may be one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men, but it wasn’t always that way.

In fact, the A Star is Born director told a little white lie to land his first major role.

Cooper briefly appeared in a season two episode of Sex and the City titled ‘They Kill Single People, Don’t They?’

The 48-year-old played ‘Jake’, a fleeting love interest of Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the series).

The small role only had one requirement…the actor could drive a manual car. A skill that Cooper hadn’t quite mastered yet.

Whoops.

Appearing on Watch What Happens Live, his co-star Cynthia Nixon explained that the role required Cooper to drive Carrie around in a vintage car.

“He told them he knew how to drive a stick because it was his first job and he was desperate to get it,” Nixon said.

“And then the time came for him to pull out, and he was like, ‘I don’t know how to drive a stick.’”

Cooper also discussed the incident during an interview with Backstage magazine in 2012.

“I thought it went well when I learned on a Volkswagen, but then I was driving a 1962 Porsche convertible where the clutch was as if I was driving a bus,” he said.

“And I had Sarah Jessica Parker in the passenger seat.”

The Hangover star also told the Irish Central he was nervous about kissing Parker.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

“I was very nervous because I was driving a stick shift, a standard Porsche, and I thought I was going to bang Sarah Jessica Parker’s head against the dashboard. That was all I was thinking about,” he said.

"And then right before we shot the scene, this guy came up and I think he said, 'SJP does no tongue. No tongue, man'. And I was like, 'Who's SJP?' So she kisses me, then straddles me in the front of the car and all I kept thinking about was keeping my tongue as far back in my mouth as possible. It was a nightmare. But she wasn't - she was great."

In the end, Cooper managed to nail the scene, and it only confirmed that the acting business was for him.

“I felt the same way I did when I first went onstage and performed,” he told Backstage.

“I went, ‘I feel at home here.’ It was 2:30 in the morning, they blocked off 14th Street in Manhattan, and there were, like, a hundred people screaming for Sarah Jessica. I was like, ‘This is the imaginary world that I love watching in theatres.’ I loved it.”

Cooper is just one of many Sex and the City guest stars who went on to have enormous success in Hollywood. John Slattery, Jennifer Coolidge, Murray Bartlett and Justin Theroux also played fleeting roles in the series.