Bradley Cooper was inspired by Vince Vaughn during the filming of Wedding Crashers

Bradley Cooper has come a long way from his memorably antagonistic role as the preppy boyfriend, Sack Lodge (yup, that was his name), to Rachel McAdams‘ character in Wedding Crashers. In the film, Cooper’s character was rightfully suspicious of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn conning their way into a wealthy family when Wilson developed feelings for McAdams. This starts a subplot where Cooper tries to expose them. Although the role is the quintessential “bad guy” character in the 2005 Frat Pack film, Cooper would seem to come away with the biggest career from that film as he has become quite the prestigious filmmaker.

According to Variety, Cooper attributes Wedding Crashers as his break-out role when he was mostly known as an ally to Jennifer Garner in Alias, and the Sack Lodge character was a big opportunity to show his range with his image. Cooper recently had partaken in an actor discussion with fellow nominees. When each actor was asked about their career-changing moment, Cooper would cite Vince Vaughn as inspiration, “Up until that point, I was always just trying to get it right on camera. Be present and get it right. I’m watching Vince Vaughn destroy a scene, just crush it, and then he wants another take. It was the scene where the grandmother is shooting him, takes the gun out and he’s running out. He’s just like, ‘I want to do another one.’ In front of everyone…this huge crew and lights and it’s so nerve-wracking…and it was his willingness to fail.”

The writer, director and star of Maestro continued, “Watching Vince Vaughn…this huge tough guy, funniest guy, quickest guy…I was just in awe of this human, this man just failing, just willing to try anything. At some point he was just scatting and caught onto this thing and was doing this song. I loved seeing it, but clearly it wasn’t working. But it didn’t even matter. It was all of us watching this artist just explore with complete abandon. It was like a diamond through the middle of my head going, ‘That’s it! That freedom to just be absolutely willing to fail.’ It changed me forever. That was the moment.”