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Back in the day Coop was a figure of quiet integrity, an everyman kind of hero short on words and big on deeds. Indeed Gary Cooper was the epitome of mid-American values, uncomplicated and even when conflicted by troubling moral dilemmas always driven to do the right thing.
Just think of his portrayal of the tough but emotionally distant military dad in American Beauty, or the man most annoyed that his spy had gone rogue in The Bourne Identity. Then there was his Oscar winning contribution to Adaptation, as a psychotic orchid buff, and his role at the dark heart of Breach, playing a high ranking FBI agent who betrayed his country with breathtaking insouciance.
Robert Hanssen was a veteran at the bureau, not necessarily liked by colleagues but respected by those he worked with for his undeniable skills. But when he began to be suspected as the mole who had been feeding valuable information to Russia for more than two decades an elaborate trap was laid. A rookie agent named Eric O'Neill (played here by Ryan Phillippe) was sent to spy on this spy and see what hard evidence he could discreetly find.
"He made our country extremely vulnerable" says the redoubtable Cooper, "he gave information of what would happen in the case of a catastrophic attack. He gave the Soviets the information of where our President would be. He gave away satellite information, technology information, codes. He gave the Soviets information about Soviet agents who were working for America and those people died. There's a lot of evil in the man."
As implacable in person as you might imagine him to be from his performances on screen, Cooper has no fears about playing such an unsympathetic character. But as his director Billy Ray says, he does not play him that way. For Cooper the challenge was to portray a man who was living a lie, a staunch patriot who was guilty of the most heinous treason.
"Yeah, this was an unusual challenge," he nods. "I made a choice that in many scenes I was going to have a completely different set of circumstances and thoughts in my head while playing the scene. I thought this was something that Hanssen must've gone through all the time. It was a challenge but it was a choice I decided to make and, for me, that's the fun of creating a character and feeling that I've really filled them out to my satisfaction."
Co-star Ryan Phillippe cites Cooper as 'the best working actor in the business', and it would not be stretching things to suggest that he is indeed an actor's actor, a man who draws ready admiration from his peers in the industry. Whether Robert Hanssen, ensconced as he is in prison for his crimes, would be pleased to see himself played by so respected an actor is another matter.
"I think most actors would say they'd like to meet the character they're playing," Cooper muses, "but in some respects I feel that I'd be toyed with if I met him face to face."
It's tempting to wonder whether, had such a meeting taken place Hanssen could have withstood the withering Chris Cooper stare. Like his namesake Gary he embodies a quiet strength of purpose, even if the roles he plays are occasionally directed toward less heroic ends. That, perhaps, marks a subtle shift in the way Hollywood movies tell their stories today, a more nuanced take on a world stripped of its political naivety, where a high ranking FBI man can turn out to be the enemy within.
ANWAR BRETT
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Renowned operative and suspected spy Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) begins to grow suspicious of Eric O'Neil (Ryan Phillippe) the FBI trainee hand picked to keep an eye on him, in the thriller Breach.
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