NEW YORK — Bradley Cooper recently recounted a terrifying incident on the New York City subway while on his way to pick his daughter up from school.
During an appearance on the “Armchair Expert” podcast, hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the award-winning actor said he was once held up at knifepoint at a subway station in Manhattan.
“It was pretty insane. But I realized I had gotten way, way too comfortable in the city,” Cooper said. “My guard was down.”
Cooper said the incident happened in October 2019, but did not specify which subway station.
“I felt somebody coming up, and I thought, ‘Oh, they want to take a photo or something.’ And as I turned … I’m up against the post … and I turned and I looked down and I see a knife,” the actor recalled.
Cooper said the knife was about 2 ½ to 3 inches long with a wooden handle. The actor said he had headphones on and was listening to music the entire time, but couldn’t remember what songs.
“I look up, I see the person’s eyes and I’m taken by how young they are,” he said.
But what the actor did next, might surprise some people. Cooper said the next thing he knew, he was running.
“I just started running. I jumped over the turnstile, hid around the white-tiled [subway entrance], took my phone out. He jumped over – running away – and I took a photo of him and then I chased him up the stairs. He started running up Seventh Avenue and I took two more photographs of him.”
Cooper said he was able to flag down two police officers in a vehicle and told them what happened.
“And the guy kept saying … ‘Are you stabbed,’” he recalled. “And he goes, ‘No, no, check to see if you’re stabbed’ because what happens is people get stabbed and they’re in shock … and I looked to see if he was right.”
Cooper said he then got back on the subway and went to pick up his daughter.
It wasn’t immediately clear if a police report was filed or whether anyone was arrested in connection with the incident.