Zoe Saldana and Bradley Cooper came to the Sundance Film Festival to promote their closing-night film, “The Words.”
The two actors play a married couple in the movie, which follows an aspiring writer who gains fame when he finds an old manuscript and passes it off as his own.
The pair avoided any appearance of their reported off-screen romance by staying apart from one another while posing for photos and giving interviews to support the film. Saldana did affectionately touch Cooper as they passed in a hallway, though.
Both had been to Sundance before, where snow fell throughout the festival and the weather dipped into the teens. Still, Saldana maintained her fashionista edge.
“I did bring warm stuff but I also brought fashion-y stuff. Come on. You’ve got to pay the price, even if it’s too cold,” she said.
The 33-year-old actress wore green suede shoes with spiked stiletto heels despite the slushy conditions.
“They’re kind of fabulous. They’re also lethal. So I have to be really careful, and somebody has to be careful not to piss me off,” she said with a smile. “Yeah right. I’m just trying not to fall. It’s like ‘Please don’t fall. Please don’t fall,’ if I’m walking.”
Cooper’s first time at the festival was 12 years earlier with the eventual cult comedy hit “Wet Hot American Summer.”
“I wasn’t even able to get into the screening,” he recalled.
Saldana said playing Cooper’s wife in “The Words” made her think about how she approaches relationships and the concept of unconditional love.
“Like how unconditional am I when I’m in love. Do you bypass certain things? Would I be able to be with a man — or with someone — that feels incomplete, doesn’t matter what we do?” she said. “If we change this, if we get married, if we have a baby — just someone that feels incomplete. Would I be able to deal with that for so many years and accept them as who they are and go, ‘Come as you are. This is who I fell in love with and I don’t want to change you?’
“I’m not like that, which is why I wanted to play her, because it was a challenge, you know. Look at me, I totally said I’m not unconditional at all. So awful.”
Cooper’s part as author-plagiarist Rory Jansen is his second writerly role after playing a novelist in last year’s “Limitless.” But that’s just coincidence, he said. Despite having a degree in English, the 37-year-old actor says he typically only writes in his “girlnal.”
“Journal, sorry,” he said. “That’s a ‘Wet Hot’ reference. Paul Rudd says that.”
Saldana, meanwhile, is in the midst of shooting the “Star Trek” sequel in Los Angeles with director J.J. Abrams and much of the original’s cast.
“It’s wonderful because I’ve been dying to work with the cast again, to work with JJ,” she said. “I love him so much. He’s such an amazing human being and such an amazing storyteller and a great director, so what more can I ask for? I start the year and I’m literally going back to a very familiar environment and being a part of a great story.”
“The Words,” which also stars Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons, Ben Barnes and Olivia Wilde, premiered Friday. It was acquired early in the festival by CBS Films, which plans to release it theatrically in the fall. Sundance continues through Sunday.
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