Bradley Cooper admits he struggled to connect with daughter Lea when she was born

Maestro Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper just got real about the complicated feelings that come with being a first-time parent.

Speaking with Dax Sheppard on the Armchair Expert podcast, the actor-director revealed that when his six-year-old daughter Lea, whom he shares with ex-partner Irina Shayk, was first born, he struggled to connect with her for 8 months.

Saying he initially didn’t understand the common parenting refrain of “I would die for my kids,” Cooper told Sheppard, “The first eight months — I don’t even know if I really love the kid. It’s dope. It’s cool. I’m watching this thing morph.”

“That’s my experience,” he went on.  “Fascinated by it. Loved taking care of it. But would I die if someone came in with a gun?”

“And then all of a sudden, it’s like no question,” he added.

He noted that becoming a father in 2017 made him want to be a better man, “to do the least amount of damage that [he] could do to [his] daughter.”

“I’m not sure I’d be alive if I wasn’t a dad,” he remarked. “I just needed someone to say, like, ‘We’re gonna drop this massive anchor. I’m like, ‘Why? We’re speeding! I just got an upgrade on the boat, and I know where the wind’s coming in.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, no, there’s a tsunami coming in, and you need an anchor and we’re gonna drop it.’ Because this is gonna dictate everything you do from now on. Your DNA is going to tell you that there’s something more important than you.”

His raw and candid comments come at a time when more parents are understanding the effects of postpartum depression, however, social media has picked up on his comments and has ran with it.