Chris Cooper Filmography

Hurricane Mary

Actors: Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Cooper, William H. Macy, Laura San Giacomo

Synopsis: A devoted Irish-American mother (Patricia Clarkson) wages a tenacious battle to get her two disabled twin daughters (Dakota and Elle Fanning) into the public school system in director Arvin Brown's heartfelt docudrama. William H. Macy, Chris Cooper, and Laura San Giacomo co-star in a film produced Read More

American Experience: Walt Whitman

Synopsis: In this documentary exploring the life of Leaves of Grass author Walt Whitman, fans of the poet are invited to explore his life story from the days of his working-class childhood, through his time as a Brooklyn-based newspaper reporter, and his unending quest to ensure that his work gained the Read More

The Kingdom

Actors: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Jeremy Piven, Danny Huston

Synopsis: In the aftermath of a deadly attack on American forces in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, diplomats are slow to act, but meanwhile, FBI special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) assembles a secret team of U.S. counter-terrorism investigators to enter the city and find the criminal behind what has quickly Read More

Primo Levi's Journey

Actors: Andrzej Wajda, Ruslana Bilozir, Modesto Ferrarini, Mario Rigoni Stern, Chris Cooper, Umberto Orsini

Synopsis: Primo Levi's harrowing memoir If This Is a Man appeared in the U.S. in 1959 as Survival in Auschwitz; historians now regard it as the most critically important written conveyance of the horrors within the Nazi concentration camps. But the account in that text only represents half of Levi's story. Read More

Breach

Actors: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert, Gary Cole, Caroline Dhavernas

Synopsis: Shattered Glass director Billy Ray directs Chris Cooper and Ryan Philippe in this fact-based drama concerning the FBI traitor who carried out what many historians refer to as the most notable national security breach in U.S. history. A key member of the FBI's elite Soviet Analytical Unit, Robert Read More

The Road Back

Actors: Chris Cooper

Syriana

Actors: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt

Synopsis: Oil drives greed in Oscar-winning Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan's labyrinthine sophomore directorial effort that traces the corruption of the global oil industry from the backrooms of Washington, D.C., to the petroleum-rich fields of the Middle East. Based in part on the writings of former Read More

Jarhead

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, Brian Gberaghty, Jacob Vargas

Synopsis: A young man gets a crash course in the madness of war in this fact-based drama from director Sam Mendes. Anthony "Swoff" Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) decides to join the Marines, just like his father and his father before him, and signs on just in time to be sent to Iraq to fight in the Gulf War in Read More

Capote

Actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood

Synopsis: The creation of one of the most memorable books of the 1960s -- and the impact the writing and research would have on its author -- is explored in this drama based on a true story. In 1959, Truman Capote (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was a critically acclaimed novelist who had earned a small Read More

Silver City

Actors: Danny Huston, Maria Bello, Billy Zane, Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Kay Place, Miguel Ferrer, Thora Birch

Synopsis: Celebrated writer and director John Sayles turns his eye to politics in America in this drama. The son of respected Colorado politician Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper) is a charming but half-bright man with a bad habit of mangling the English language and a Read More

Seabiscuit

Actors: Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Gary Stevens

Synopsis: For his sophomore effort, director Gary Ross re-teams with Tobey Maguire and William H. Macy, stars of his directorial debut Pleasantville, for this depression-era sports drama about the legendary racehorse, Seabiscuit. Unlike 1949's fictionalized The Story of Seabiscuit starring Shirley Temple Read More

Interstate 60

Actors: James Marsden, Gary Oldman, Kurt Russell, Michael J. Fox, Chris Cooper

Synopsis: At the beginning of Interstate 60, Neal Oliver (James Mardsen) has more questions about his future than answers. Though he would rather pursue a career in art, Neal debates whether or not he should set his goals towards a law degree, as his father would greatly prefer. He has a girlfriend, but he Read More

My House in Umbria

Actors: Maggie Smith, Ron Barker, Chris Cooper, Bernard Furmann, Giancarlo Giannini

Synopsis: Adapted from William Trevor's novella of the same name, the made-for-cable My House in Umbria stars Dame Maggie Smith as Mrs. Emily Delahunty, a British romance novelist living in Italy. While on a shopping excursion to Milan, Emily barely survives a terrorist train bombing. Though she recovers Read More

The Ring

Actors: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox, Jane Alexander

Synopsis: A disturbing videotape appears to hold the power of life and death over those who view it in this offbeat thriller. A strange videotape begins making the rounds in a town in the Pacific Northwest; it is full of bizarre and haunting images, and after watching it, many viewers receive a telephone Read More

The Bourne Identity

Actors: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Chris Cooper

Synopsis: The best-selling suspense novel by late author Robert Ludlum comes to the screen for a second time, following a 1988 made-for-TV movie. Matt Damon stars as Jason Bourne, a barely alive amnesiac with a pair of bullet wounds in his back, pulled from the Mediterranean by Italian fishermen. Bourne's Read More

Adaptation

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Cara Seymour

Synopsis: The creative team behind Being John Malkovich -- director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman -- return with this equally offbeat comedy, in which Kaufman himself becomes the leading character. Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is a gifted but profoundly neurotic screenwriter who, after the Read More

The Patriot

Actors: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Chris Cooper

Synopsis: Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the director/producer team responsible for such sci-fi blockbusters as Independence Day, Stargate, and Godzilla, take a step back in time with this drama set during the American Revolution. Farmer Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) was born and raised in South Carolina Read More

Me, Myself & Irene

Actors: Jim Carrey, Renée Zellweger, Chris Cooper, Robert Forster, Richard Jenkins, Rob Moran

Synopsis: Six years after Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey reunited with Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly for this anarchic comedy with a hint of romance. Charlie (Carrey) is a good-natured Rhode Island state trooper who likes helping people. But years of internalizing his frustrations about his work and his Read More

American Beauty

Actors: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper

Synopsis: Noted theater director Sam Mendes, who was responsible for the acclaimed 1998 revival of Cabaret and Nicole Kidman's turn in The Blue Room, made his motion picture debut with this film about the dark side of an American family, and about the nature and price of beauty in a culture obsessed with Read More

October Sky

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern, Chris Owen, William Lee Scott

Synopsis: NASA engineer Homer H. Hickam, Jr.'s autobiography provided the basis for this drama about a teenager coming of age at the dawn of the space race. In 1957, Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a high school student in Coalwood, West Virginia when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first man-made Read More

The Horse Whisperer

Actors: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Scarlett Johansson

Synopsis: Robert Redford directed himself for the first time in this romantic drama adapted from the 1995 best-seller by Nicholas Evans. Fourteen-year-old Grace MacLean (Scarlett Johansson of Manny & Lo) and her friend Judith go horseback riding in upstate New York on a winter morning, but their horses lose Read More

Great Expectations

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank Azaria, Chris Cooper, Anne Bancroft, Robert De Niro

Synopsis: Alfonso Cuaron (The Little Princess) directed this Mitch Glazer screenplay, a modernization of the 1860-61 classic by Charles Dickens. Some situations in the film are presented as memories -- the way the central figure, Finnegan Bell (Ethan Hawke) recalls events many years later. At a Florida Read More

Alone

Actors: Ed Begley, Jr., Chris Cooper, Shelley Duvall, James Earl Jones, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: A lonely man receives some not entirely welcome attention from his children in this drama written by Horton Foote. John Webb (Hume Cronyn) is an aging farmer from Texas who recently lost his wife and is coming to terms with spending the rest of his days on his own. An oil company believes that Read More

Breast Men

Actors: David Schwimmer, Chris Cooper, Emily Procter, Matt Frewer, Louise Fletcher

Synopsis: This docudrama recaps the history of silicone breast implants, beginning in 1962 when idealistic Houston medical resident Kevin Saunders (David Schwimmer) gets an idea after seeing how women pad their bras. After he shares his notion with cosmetic pro Dr. William Larson (Chris Cooper), the two Read More

Boys

Actors: Winona Ryder, Lukas Haas, Skeet Ulrich, John C. Reilly, Bill Sage

Synopsis: Boys is a coming-of-age tale about an addled prep school student who nurses a woman back to health after an accident and becomes involved in her cryptic past. John Baker Jr. (Lukas Haas) is a tormented high school senior outcast who's weary of his upper-crust boarding school life and dreads his Read More

Law & Order: Blood Libel

Synopsis: In an echo of a racist incident in Connecticut in 1995, an anti-Semitic "code message" in a high school yearbook may be the key to the murder of an art teacher. Comparatively speaking, tracking down the likely killers is the easy part. The problems for the D.A.'s office begin when McCoy (Sam Waterston Read More

Lone Star

Actors: Miriam Colon, Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Joe Morton, Ron Canada, Clifton James, Kris Kristofferson

Synopsis: Reminiscent of a fine novel in depth and complexity, writer-director John Sayles' acclaimed drama uses the investigation of a 25-year-old murder as the framework for a detailed exploration of life in a Texas border town. The nominal center of the film is Sheriff Sam Deeds (the superb, subtle Chris Cooper Read More

The Deliverance of Elaine

Synopsis: Throughout her life, small-town schoolteacher Elaine Hodges (Mare Winningham) has been fiercely devoted to her infirm, alcoholic father Addison (Lloyd Bridges). Even her affection for a local cop (Ron Lea)--who happens to already have a wife--will not permit Elaine to even consider leaving her Read More

A Time to Kill

Actors: Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Brenda Fricker

Synopsis: Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) takes the law into his own hands after the legal system fails to adequately punish the men who brutally raped and beat his daughter, leaving her for dead. Normally, a distraught father could count on some judicial sympathy in those circumstances. Unfortunately Read More

Pharaoh's Army

Synopsis: This fascinating historical drama, set in 1862 during the Civil War, chronicles the coming of age of a young Kentucky farm boy. The story begins in Meshack Creek, KY, a tense town where loyalties were sharply divided. Sarah Anders and her son were living there on an isolated farm while her husband Read More

Money Train

Actors: Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Lopez, Robert Blake, Chris Cooper

Synopsis: A pair of New York City cops collaborate on a plan to rob a cash-packed subway train in this action-comedy. Charlie (Woody Harrelson) and John (Wesley Snipes) are not just co-workers and close friends but also foster brothers. Because of this family connection, the reluctant John becomes involved Read More

A Little Piece of Sunshine

Actors: Lauren Bacall, Philip Michael Thomas, Larry Lamb

Synopsis: Sunshine, a sunny Carribean island, is a little-known haven for organized crime, drug running, and murder. When a private investigator (Philip Michael Thomas) arrives to investigate the mysterious death of a British governer, he finds himself at odds with the Cuban Secret Police, the Miami Read More

This Boy's Life

Actors: Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Blechman, Eliza Dushku

Synopsis: A single mother and her difficult son find family life isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be in this drama adapted from writer and professor Tobias Wolff's 1989 memoir of the same name. Nomadic, flaky Caroline (Ellen Barkin) just wants to settle down in one place, find a decent guy, and Read More

Return to Lonesome Dove

Actors: Barbara Hershey, Jon Voight

Synopsis: The first of a number of sequels to the highly successful western mini-series Lonesome Dove featured few of the same actors as the original, nor was it based on a novel by Larry McMurtry. In this outing, onetime Texas Ranger Call (Jon Voight, replacing Tommy Lee Jones) heads a group of cowboys Read More

Bed of Lies

Actors: Susan Dey, Chris Cooper, G.W. Bailey

Synopsis: When a poor waitress shoots her abusive husband, she is forced to battle the courts for custody of her children while waiting for a verdict on her trial for murder of her husband. Based on a true story, it does a credible job in the depiction of the abusive relationship but some of the impact is Read More

Ned Blessing

Actors: Daniel Baldwin, Chris Cooper, Luis Avalos, Taylor Fry, Sean Baca

Synopsis: Set in the 19th century on the eve of his execution, the title swashbuckler decides to tell the truth about his life and his professions as both upholder of the law and criminal. As he speaks, his adventures unfurl upon the screen. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

City of Hope

Actors: Vincent Spano, Joe Morton, Tony Lo Bianco, Anthony John Denison, Barbara Williams

Synopsis: A city pulses with racial problems, political corruption, and small-time crime in this ambitious microcosm of urban life, written and directed by John Sayles. Nick Rinaldi (Vincent Spano), a lost soul usually high on drink and drugs, has spent his life in one New Jersey city, getting free rides Read More

Guilty by Suspicion

Actors: Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, George Wendt, Patricia Wettig, Sam Wanamaker

Synopsis: The directorial debut of producer Irwin Winkler, Guilty by Suspicion is a sobering account of one movie executive's woes in dealing with the political fallout from the McCarthy Era Hollywood blacklist. Robert De Niro stars as David Merrill, a film director in the 1950s whose obsession with his Read More

1,000 Pieces of Gold

Actors: Rosalind Chao, Chris Cooper, Michael Paul Chan, Dennis Dun, Jimmie F. Skaggs

Synopsis: Produced on a shoestring $2 million budget, documentary director Nancy Kelly and her husband, editor Kenji Yamamoto created this romantic western based on a true story. Rosalind Chao stars as Lalu Nathoy, a young woman sold into marriage by her impoverished father in late 19th century China. Lalu Read More

Darrow

Actors: Kevin Spacey

Synopsis: Kevin Spacey plays legendary attorney/civil libertarian Clarence Darrow in this made-for-TV biopic. The story begins in 1894, when Darrow gives up his job as a railroad attorney to represent the participants of the Pullman strike. Darrow's "man of the people" reputation grows to mythic proportions Read More

In Broad Daylight

Actors: Brian Dennehy, Cloris Leachman, Marcia Gay Harden, Chris Cooper, John Anderson

Synopsis: In this drama, based on a true story, desperate townsfolk take up arms to defeat the sociopathic town bully who has been terrorizing them for years. They then swear themselves to silence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Lonesome Dove

Actors: Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Rick Schroder, Robert Urich, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston

Synopsis: This six-hour miniseries, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurtry, revitalized both the miniseries and Western genres, both of which had been considered dead for several years. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones star as fun-loving Gus MacRae and taciturn Woodrow Call Read More

Matewan

Actors: Chris Cooper, Will Oldham, Mary McDonnell, Bob Gunton, James Earl Jones

Synopsis: Independent filmmaker John Sayles creates one of his more artistic works with this period feature about a volatile 1920s labor dispute in the town of Matewan, West Virginia. Matewan is a coal town where the local miners' lives are controlled by the powerful Stone Mountain Coal Company. The company Read More

Bad Timing

Actors: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Massey

Synopsis: Psychiatrist Alex (Art Garfunkel) becomes sexually obsessed with Milena (Theresa Russell), a woman whom he meets at a party. The pair become involved in an intense and mutually destructive love affair. The drama unfolds in a series of flashbacks, as Alex tells his story to police Inspector Netusil Read More