Peter LindberghHer part in A Star Is Born seems like a role Lady Gaga was born to play, but she admits that she got the jitters her first day on set.
The singer tells the Los Angeles Times that director/co-star Bradley Cooper tried to get her to loosen up by throwing her a line that wasn’t in the script. But she says she didn’t understand what he was trying to do, and instead of reacting to the new line, she just kept repeating the old one over and over.
“Finally, he said, ‘Are you OK?’ And then I started crying,” she says. “Then I got that out of the way and then we did the scene. I had to let go of the words.”
Eventually, she explains, the two developed a shorthand with each other. When Bradley needed her to focus, he’d say the words “ninja” or “assassin,” and when he needed a feeling of warmth from her, he’d say “Tony” — a reference to Gaga’s close relationship with Tony Bennett.
While Gaga did connect in many ways to her character, Ally — an aspiring singer who becomes a muse for Bradley’s rock star character Jackson Maine — she admits there were some key differences.
“The truth is, when we meet Ally, she’s given up on herself,” she says. “And that’s very different from me. I just wasn’t overwhelmed by the odds.”
Instead, she says, she was determined not to stop until she made it.
“I was dragging my piano from dive bar to dive bar to play music,” she says. “I was calling people, faking being my own manager to get gigs.”
A Star Is Born premieres at the Venice Film Festival today and hits theaters October 5.
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