Bradley Cooper’s new face at 50: Has he gone too far?

Bradley Coop­er stepped out this month look­ing, well, dif­fer­ent. Attend­ing the pre­miere of his new film Is This Thing On? dur­ing the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, his change in appear­ance wasn’t just a case of a fresh new hair­cut or an overzeal­ous man tan. Cooper’s face looked vis­i­bly tighter and more lift­ed, rais­ing spec­u­la­tion that the 50 year old has had some recent – and dra­mat­ic – aes­thet­ic work.

A few weeks ear­li­er, Coop­er looked just as refreshed attend­ing a Vogue par­ty with his mod­el girl­friend Gigi Hadid, who is 21 years his junior. But is this “refresh” more than just a lit­tle tweak, or a case of aes­thet­ic work gone too far? We ask some of the UK’s lead­ing experts.

“Bradley Coop­er has always had excel­lent facial aes­thet­ics with a well-defined, strong jaw­line and good bone struc­ture,” says Paul Tul­ley, a con­sul­tant plas­tic sur­geon.

As one of the high­est-paid A‑listers, Coop­er has also been some­thing of a Hol­ly­wood heart­throb, and was named Peo­ple magazine’s Sex­i­est Man Alive in 2011. “But recent­ly, his jaw and neck­line are look­ing more defined and there have been some changes with him look­ing a lit­tle slim­mer in the face,” points out Tul­ley. This “slim­ming” of the face, he says, could be a sign of poten­tial­ly using weight loss drugs.

But there is spec­u­la­tion that his chang­ing face is a result of sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion. “Look­ing at the lat­est pic­tures of Bradley Coop­er, it looks like he’s had a facelift, and also ble­pharo­plas­ty, which is eye­lid surgery to open up the eye­lids,” says Patrick Mal­luc­ci, anoth­er con­sul­tant plas­tic sur­geon. “His neck looks lighter and his jaw­line looks well-defined, which are clas­sic indi­ca­tors of facelift surgery.”

Tul­ley agrees, and thinks Coop­er has had a face and neck lift to enhance his well-defined jaw­line “although this appears to have con­cen­trat­ed more on the low­er face and jaw­line.”

He also notes that Coop­er appears to have well-dis­guised facelift inci­sions in the ear creas­es, with “some hints of inflam­ma­tion around his eye­lids, par­tic­u­lar­ly the low­er lids,” which may be a result of eye­lid ble­pharo­plas­ty surgery, which removes fat and vol­ume from the upper and low­er lids.

“Bradley Cooper’s face has changed quite notice­ably,” adds David Jack, an aes­thet­ics doc­tor. “He appears to have had a deep-plane facelift,” – a tech­nique that lifts and repo­si­tions the deep­er mus­cle and fat lay­ers of the face – “along with pos­si­ble filler in the mid-face and ble­pharo­plas­ty surgery around the eyes.” Jack also notes that Cooper’s “unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly smooth and taut skin for his age may be a result of laser resur­fac­ing.”

The midlife facelift boom

The British Asso­ci­a­tion of Aes­thet­ic Plas­tic Sur­geons revealed an over­all eight per­cent increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK – but a 26 per­cent increase specif­i­cal­ly in men opt­ing for facelift surgery. This doesn’t come cheap, with a start­ing price of £20,000 reach­ing the hun­dreds of thou­sands for a high­ly sought-after sur­geon (for her recent face lift, it was report­ed Kris Jen­ner paid around £150,000 with the New York-based sur­geon Dr Steve Levine).

In recent years, it has become increas­ing­ly com­mon for men and women to have sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion younger: the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Facial Plas­tic and Recon­struc­tive Surgery has found that 32 per­cent of facelift patients are aged between 35 and 55.

Cooper’s new appear­ance was also notice­able when attend­ing the Vogue Octo­ber issue cock­tail par­ty — Aeon/GC Images

“The log­ic is that ear­li­er surgery is less con­spic­u­ous, main­tain­ing the illu­sion of ‘effort­less youth’, but it can cre­ate an odd dis­so­nance when the face looks sev­er­al years younger than the rest of the body,” notes Jack.

In Jack’s Harley Street clin­ic, one in three of his patients are men “which would have been unheard of 15 years ago,” he says. “They’re gen­er­al­ly seek­ing the same advan­tages women have long pur­sued to look well-rest­ed, con­fi­dent and sharp, while still look­ing entire­ly mas­cu­line.”

How to do midlife tweaks the right way
While a full facelift isn’t always the course of action required, or even desired, by many midlife men, there are sub­tle ways to improve your appear­ance as you age.

Small dos­es of injecta­bles can open the eyes and care­ful use of filler can replace vol­ume lost with age. “As well as a facelift, Coop­er is like­ly to have also been treat­ed with Botox and skin reju­ve­na­tion treat­ments such as Hydrafa­cials and polynu­cleotides to main­tain skin qual­i­ty,” says Tul­ley.

Accord­ing to Mal­luc­ci, it’s the sim­ple things that make a dif­fer­ence: good skin­care, sun pro­tec­tion and “some well tar­get­ed anti-wrin­kle injec­tions with­out over­do­ing it,” he adds.

So how do you know if you’ve gone too far with treat­ments? Jack says: “The dan­ger, if any inter­ven­tion is done too aggres­sive­ly or with­out sen­si­tiv­i­ty to male anato­my, is fem­i­ni­sa­tion; over­ly full cheeks; soft­ened jaw­lines or shiny, over-pol­ished skin.”

“The art of treat­ing men lies in know­ing when to stop and the aim is always to look like a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self, not an entire­ly new per­son.”

So has Bradley gone too far with his appar­ent aes­thet­ic work? The jury is out, but the experts all agree that when it comes to midlife tweaks, a light hand and strate­gic, nat­ur­al-look­ing enhance­ments reign supreme.