Chris Cooper on Storied Career, From ‘American Beauty’ to ‘Adaptation’ and Conjuring Depth in New Film ‘The History of Sound’

Chris Cooper was the talk of the Upper East Side. When he first moved to Manhattan in the mid-1970s to pursue acting, he brought his tools with him. And between auditions, he began to pick up home-renovation and handyman jobs—installing custom shelves, building a wet bar, putting in a kitchen, wallpapering, painting. Soon the quiet young man from Missouri with carpentry skills and a toolbox on wheels was a hot commodity in one of New York’s toniest neighborhoods. “The thing that worked was I did one job at a time, from beginning to end, right to their satisfaction,” says Cooper, pointing his finger at me for emphasis. “And my name spread like wildfire. Wildfire .”

In the decades since, the now-seventy-four-year-old Cooper has built his career in much the same way—as a skilled craftsman