Meryl Streep may be a great actress, but her advice evidently leaves something to be desired. When Bradley Cooper was a student at the Village’s Actors Studio (of James Lipton and TV fame), the actress paid a visit.
“She said that the easiest thing is to do your first good movie, but then to do your second, that’s the hardest,” Cooper tells The Post. “You know, I don’t really look at it that way. It depends where your goal is. If your goal is to just grow as an actor, then everything’s an opportunity.”
Now well past his second movie, Cooper is moving into a new career phase, filled less with popcorn flicks and more with meaty work that Lipton might swoon over, such as Friday’s “The Words,” about a struggling writer who passes off a novel by an old man (Jeremy Irons) as his own.
PHOTOS: BRADLEY COOPER’S RISE TO STARDOM
Even though Cooper is riding high off “The Hangover” franchise and was named last year’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” he says he’s still not the most confident person. Like the novelist character he plays, he can relate to a career filled with constant rejection.
“When I first started auditioning, I didn’t realize that you actually could book a job,” says Cooper, who once worked as a doorman at Midtown’s Morgans Hotel. “I still remember when I booked ‘Sex in the City’ [for my first job, in 1999]. I was very frightened because I had to actually do the job. [To me] rejection was normal and getting [work] was odd.”
Cooper’s looks enticed Hollywood to push him into rom-coms, but audiences just weren’t that into him in films such as “All About Steve.” He left the genre behind in 2010, and tried the action-star route in “The A-Team,” but that fizzled.
Then, last year’s modestly budgeted “Limitless,” about a schlub who turns his life around using brain-enhancing pills, was a surprise hit and pointed a new direction for Cooper. He shines in intelligent-but-not-too-challenging dramas, and quickly adapted to his strong suit.
This fall, he appears in David O. Russell’s “The Silver Linings Playbook” as a former mental patient who moves in with his parents. Cooper says it was the most emotionally demanding role of his career.
Next year, Cooper is slated to make a serious “serious actor” statement. He’ll return to Broadway, digging into the contorted body and slurred speech of John Merrick in “The Elephant Man.”
Cooper grew up repeatedly watching David Lynch’s film, and this summer he played the character at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. “I felt such a connection [to Merrick and the film],” Cooper told The New Yorker. “It affected me so much emotionally, and I thought, I’d love to be able to do that to other people.”
Perhaps feeling kinship with a disfigured man and his years of rejection, Cooper says he still had doubts going into “The Words.”
“I was very scared that I was going to fail these two guys when they asked me to do it,” he says of “Words” first-time directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, who are friends of his. He didn’t crack his character until a week before shooting started.
Doubling his anxiety was the prospect of working with Irons. But the Oscar winner turned out to be all charm.
“I remember the most nervous I’ve ever been was meeting Christopher Walken during ‘Wedding Crashers,’ ” he recalls. “[But] talk about a guy who puts you at ease. I just kind of fell in love with him, and Jeremy Irons follows suit completely. These two guys never directed a movie before and Jeremy Irons shows up and he made everybody feel completely at ease. He could have just come in like a wrecking crew and destroyed everything.”
Speaking of wrecking crews, this new phase in Cooper’s career doesn’t mean he’s leaving the misadventures of the Wolf Pack behind. “The Hangover Part III” begins filming in a few days, and this final installment will reportedly take the crew to Tijuana for who-knows-what levels of debauchery.
“Todd Phillips is, in my opinion, the best comedic director around, and Zach [Galifianakis] and Ed [Helms] are incredible and Ken Jeong has just grown and grown. We’ve got great actors coming aboard this third one, too, so I can’t wait.”
As long as someone is on set to make sure it’s better than “Part II.” Hey, how about Meryl Streep?
reed.tucker@nypost.com