Bradley Cooper Recalls Terrifying New York Subway Knife Attack

Bradley Cooper has recalled being held at knifepoint while travelling on the New York subway as he went to pick up his daughter from school. 

The actor opened up about the incident, which happened in October 2019, on an episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast on Monday.

“I was on the subway, 11.45, to pick [up] Lea downtown at Russian school and I got held up at knifepoint… It was pretty insane,” Cooper said.

“I’m all the way at the end of the subway… I felt somebody coming up but I thought, ‘Oh, they want to take a photo or something.’ As I turned, I’m up against the post like it’s The French Connection or some s***. And then I turned and I looked down and I see a knife,” he added.

Cooper said that he estimated the knife pulled on him would have been around “two-and-a-half inches” and that as soon he realised what was happening he just “started running.”

“I just started running, jumped over the turnstile, hid around the white, tiled entrance to the subway, took my phone out,” he said.

The actor continued: “He [attacker] jumped over, running away and I took a photo of him. Then I chased him up the stairs. He started running up seventh Avenue. I took two more photographs of him.”

Cooper said that he then managed to find two police officers, who he showed the photographs to, before going back on the subway to pick up his daughter.

“I ran down two police officers in an SUV and showed them the photograph,” he said.

Watch Cooper’s full Armchair Expert podcast episode below.

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