Jackie Cooper
Jackie Cooper
John Cooper, Jr., known as Jackie Cooper, was an American actor, television director, producer and executive. He was a child actor who managed to make the transition to an adult career. Cooper was the first child actor to receive an Academy Award nomination. At age nine, he was also the youngest performer to have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role—an honor that he received for the film Skippy. For nearly 50 years, Cooper...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth15 September 1922
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.
They kept me in short pants as long as they could, until they were shaving the hair on my legs because it was beginning to photograph.
I never say too much about that in public interviews, because it disappoints the public to tell them you're not that crazy about a property you did that possibly they liked.
To me, the series was the end of the actor, when the series ended.
Very often on some of this stuff when I'd have to go to work. I'd just give the script a cursory glance. I had no training, and I was a quick study, so nobody knew how involved or not involved I was. But I look at that stuff now and I can see I wasn't involved, and I wasn't very good.
There was only so much television you could do.
There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.
So then you have to say to yourself: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to do good work?
Well, they just don't know anything else except that one form of their business, acting, and they don't really want to learn any other part of it, or they would. Directing and producing and putting a show together is very creative, for me.
So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it - so long as I'm not investing too much capital in these things.
In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.
Keep doing what you've been doing and you will keep getting what you've been getting!
I just knew how to do the one thing I did, and whether I did it well or not depended on who the director was.
I had directed a little in summer theater, and I liked it, and I started getting interested in directing, in live television.