---
name: "Scott Cooper"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/scott-cooper"
fi1m_id: "scott-cooper"
imdb_id: "nm0178376"
tmdb_id: 65167
wikidata_id: "Q1750712"
roles: ["Director","Producer","Writer"]
born: "20 April 1970"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 5
average_fi1m_score: 62
average_as: "director"
average_over: 4
updated: "2026-10-05T01:33:37.671085+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Scott Cooper

## Identity

Scott Cooper

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/scott-cooper
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** scott-cooper
- **IMDb ID:** nm0178376
- **TMDB ID:** 65167
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1750712
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Cooper_(director), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1750712, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178376/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/65167

Director and producer. Born 20 April 1970 in Abingdon, Virginia, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Director, Producer, Writer
- **Born:** 20 April 1970, Abingdon, Virginia, USA
- **Active:** 1999–present
- **Also known as:** سكوت كوبر,  スコット クーパー
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 5: 1 acting, 4 directing
- **Primetime Emmy Awards:** 1 Emmy (1 won)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 62, as director, over 4 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1990s 73 (1), 2000s 71 (1), 2010s 58 (2), 2020s 61 (1)
- **Fi1m against the critics:** 62 to 62 across 4 titles
- **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 2 at 60–79, 2 under 60
- **Genres:** Drama 4, History 2, Music 2, Adventure 1, Crime 1, Romance 1
- **Screen time:** 8 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $230m across 4 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Cooper_(director), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1750712, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178376/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/65167

## Streaming the US now

- **Disney+:** [*Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere*](https://film.one/film/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere.md) (61)
- **Apple TV:** [*Hostiles*](https://film.one/film/hostiles.md) (58)
- **The Roku Channel:** [*Black Mass*](https://film.one/film/black-mass.md) (58)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Scott Cooper

> Scott Cooper makes serious, handsome, sincere films about American men on the margins, and writes his leads roles they can do something with. The films around those roles are another matter: the scripts repeat themselves and explain what the actors have already shown.

Somewhere in every Scott Cooper film a man sits alone in a plain room, or stands against a plain horizon, and does not say what he is thinking. In *Hostiles* (2017) it is Christian Bale's Captain Blocker staring at the skyline between burials. In *Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere* (2025) it is Jeremy Allen White on a bed in a rented New Jersey house with a borrowed four-track cassette recorder. Cooper's men are quiet. His films, too often, talk for them.

He was an actor first, and the films he went on to make are built for actors. *Crazy Heart* (2009), his first, gave Jeff Bridges a country singer it allowed to be a drunk and a bore before it allowed him to be good. *Out of the Furnace* (2013) began the partnership with Bale that ran through *Hostiles* and *The Pale Blue Eye* (2022), a mystery at West Point in 1830. Between them came *Black Mass* (2015), a crime film about Whitey Bulger, and *Antlers* (2021), a horror. He has said he wants to be on unfamiliar ground each time, and he has kept to it, never making the same kind of film twice running, with Masanobu Takayanagi shooting most of them.

"I make films about people who live on the margins of society," he told an interviewer, and he does. He writes them parts and gets out of the way. Rosamund Pike is remarkable in *Hostiles* as a woman who has watched her family killed, and Peter Mullan, given one warm dinner scene at a fort, made us sorry to leave the table. White is quietly good as Springsteen, and the recording scenes, a man and a machine and a song, are the best thing in that film. Cooper's strongest scenes happen at tables and on beds. His films spend a great deal of time outdoors.

The scripts are the rest of the trouble. *Hostiles* is about a soldier and a Cheyenne chief, and only the soldier is written as a person; Wes Studi is handed a face and little else, and the ride settles into travel, ambush, burial, horizon, travel, with Cross cutting each leg in the same shape until we could feel the next one coming. *Springsteen* has the better idea, one year and one cassette recorder, and Cooper makes about two thirds of it before adding an invented girlfriend, a doctor's office and repeated cuts to the hero's childhood. By the fourth or fifth of those we were restless, watching the film assemble a case for its subject rather than watching him work. A living Springsteen is allowed only the flaws his songs already admit to. The fictional singer of *Crazy Heart* got to be worse, and was better for it.

Cooper changes genre every time out and has not yet changed the habit that undoes him, which is not trusting a quiet scene to stay quiet. See *Hostiles* for Pike and the dinner, *Springsteen* for the recording sessions, and expect the next one to be handsome, sincere and carrying one performance worth the evening.

## Biography

Scott Cooper is an American filmmaker and former actor. Born on 20 April 1970 in Abingdon, Virginia, he trained as an actor at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and graduated from Hampden–Sydney College.

He began his career acting in film and television before making his directorial debut with *Crazy Heart* (2009), which he also wrote. Subsequent films he has directed and often written include *Out of the Furnace* (2013), *Black Mass* (2015), *Hostiles* (2017), *Antlers* (2021), *The Pale Blue Eye* (2022), and *Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere* (2025).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, hollywoodreporter.com.*

## On Fi1m (5)

### Performed in (1)

- *Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me* (1999), Fi1m 73, as Klansman's Son - Bobby — [page](https://film.one/film/austin-powers-the-spy-who-shagged-me.md)

### Directed (4) — the average rests on these

- *Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere* (2025), Fi1m 61, Producer, Screenplay, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere.md)
- *Hostiles* (2017), Fi1m 58, Producer, Screenplay, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/hostiles.md)
- *Black Mass* (2015), Fi1m 58, Producer, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/black-mass.md)
- *Crazy Heart* (2009), Fi1m 71, Director, Screenplay, Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/crazy-heart.md)

## Complete filmography (22)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere* (2025), Director, Screenplay, Producer — Fi1m 61, [page](https://film.one/film/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere.md)
- *The Pale Blue Eye* (2022), Writer, Director, Producer
- *Antlers* (2021), Director, Screenplay
- *Hostiles* (2017), Director, Producer, Screenplay — Fi1m 58, [page](https://film.one/film/hostiles.md)
- *Black Mass* (2015), Director, Producer — Fi1m 58, [page](https://film.one/film/black-mass.md)
- *Out of the Furnace* (2013), Screenplay, Director
- *Get Low* (2010), as Carl
- *Crazy Heart* (2009), Director, Screenplay, Producer — Fi1m 71, [page](https://film.one/film/crazy-heart.md)
- *For Sale by Owner* (2009), as Will Custis · Scenario Writer, Writer
- *Broken Trail* (2006), series, as Gilpin
- *Pinky Dinky Doo* (2006), series, Storyboard
- *Rain* (2003), as Pvt. Holland
- *Attitude* (2003), as Rails
- *Water Under the Bridge* (2003), as Jake O'Connor
- *Bill's Gun Shop* (2001), as Dillion McCarthy
- *Takedown* (2000), as Jake Cronin
- *Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me* (1999), as Klansman's Son - Bobby — Fi1m 73, [page](https://film.one/film/austin-powers-the-spy-who-shagged-me.md)
- *The X-Files* (1993), series, as Max Harden — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-x-files.md)
- *Untitled Crime Drama Film*, Writer, Producer, Director
- *Comanche*, Director
- *Untitled Roswell Sci-Fi Film*, Writer, Director
- *Time Out*, Director, Writer, Producer

## Gallery

- ![Scott Cooper](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-967f5e7047de.jpg) Scott Cooper — Sizzlipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Scott_Cooper_1100165.jpg/1280px-Scott_Cooper_1100165.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Director Scott Cooper at the premiere of Black Mass, 2015 Toronto Film Festival](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-37ad04661d7d.jpg) Director Scott Cooper at the premiere of Black Mass, 2015 Toronto Film Festival — GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Black_Mass_08_%2820833607634%29.jpg/1280px-Black_Mass_08_%2820833607634%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Johnny Depp and Director Scott Cooper at the premiere of Black Mass, 2015 Toronto Film Festival I believe the woman is just an assistant](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-364aaa5284e8.jpg) Johnny Depp and Director Scott Cooper at the premiere of Black Mass, 2015 Toronto Film Festival I believe the woman is just an assistant — GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Black_Mass_10_%2821464916761%29.jpg/1280px-Black_Mass_10_%2821464916761%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![JActors Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White, along with director Scott Cooper speaking on a panel for the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere during the (2025)](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-84dc74a23ffd.jpg) JActors Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White, along with director Scott Cooper speaking on a panel for the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere during the (2025) — Jennifer 8. Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Jeremy_Strong%2C_Jeremy_Allen_White_and_Scott_Cooper_at_the_2025_Telluride_Film_Festival.jpg/1280px-Jeremy_Strong%2C_Jeremy_Allen_White_and_Scott_Cooper_at_the_2025_Telluride_Film_Festival.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Scott Cooper](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-710aa70d090d.jpg) Scott Cooper — Image via TMDB
- ![JActors Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White, along with director Scott Cooper speaking on a panel for the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere during the (2025)](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-cd92a41f998b.jpg) JActors Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White, along with director Scott Cooper speaking on a panel for the movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere during the (2025) — Jennifer 8. Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Jeremy_Strong%2C_Jeremy_Allen_White_and_Scott_Cooper_at_the_2025_Telluride_Film_Festival_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Jeremy_Strong%2C_Jeremy_Allen_White_and_Scott_Cooper_at_the_2025_Telluride_Film_Festival_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Matthew Anthony Pellicano and Scott Cooper at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere](https://film.one/media/person/7820/gallery-b167efb394fe.jpg) Matthew Anthony Pellicano and Scott Cooper at the 63rd annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in 2025 for the film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere — Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Matthew_Anthony_Pellicano_Scott_Cooper_Springsteen-27.jpg/1280px-Matthew_Anthony_Pellicano_Scott_Cooper_Springsteen-27.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Primetime Emmy Awards — 1 won

- 2013: Outstanding Reality Program (won), for *Undercover Boss*

### Other awards — 1 won, 2 nominated

- Independent Spirit Awards 2010: Best First Feature (won), for *Crazy Heart*
- Independent Spirit Awards 2010: Best First Screenplay (nominated), for *Crazy Heart*
- Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay 2010: Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *Crazy Heart*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/scott-cooper