When People magazine caught up with Jennifer Esposito and Bradley Cooper at the InStyle Golden Globes party in 2006 and asked them whether they were in a relationship, the actress refused to answer the question. But, the news of their engagement spread around the media a few months after the event.
At the time, reporters spotted Esposito shopping for a wedding dress in Los Angeles. By December 2006, the two tied the knot with a private wedding in the South of France and went on to keep the marriage away from the public eye.
The union didn’t last long, though. The ‘Law & Order’ actress filed for divorce within five months, citing irreconcilable differences. Cooper, on his part, later told the media that the decision to break up was mutual. Delving more into the matter in a 2011 chat with Howard Stern, he added:
“It was just something that happened. The good thing is, we both realized it… Sometimes, you just realize it. It just wasn’t right. It’s interesting… things happen!”
Still, speculations about bad blood between the ex-couple made the headlines in 2014 when Esposito’s book ‘Jennifer’s Way: My Journey With Celiac Disease – What Doctors Don’t Tell You And How You Can Learn To Live Again’ came out. In the book, Esposito described an unnamed ex-partner by writing:
“He was funny, smart cocky, arrogant, and a master manipulator. I didn’t necessarily find him that attractive, but I figured that I could enjoy his sense of humor and nonsense for a while. We had fun, but he also had a mean, cold side. His personality could flip on a dime.”
Based on that, some rumored that Cooper was the person in question, while the actress refused to speak more about the topic with a statement that read:
“This book is about my journey with celiac disease and only that. To refer to anything other than the subject at hand or to make this book about anything else is an insult to me and this disease that plagues so many.”
On the other hand, more speculations arose in 2019 when Esposito commented on a photograph of the actor with his ‘A Star Is Born’ co-star, Lady Gaga. As David Spade captioned their pose at the Oscars by writing, ‘Is there any chance these two aren’t f**king?’ the actress replied, ‘ Ha,’ causing a backlash on social media.
She later clarified her comment on Instagram and explained:
“I didn’t watch the Oscars; I don’t know what went on, I don’t care what went on. I commented on something that I thought was funny… And to find that people are making judgment calls about me or them or the people that the comment was about is really psychotic.”
After her marriage with Cooper and then Louis Dowler, Esposito married Jesper Vesterstrøm in 2020. Meanwhile, Cooper dated names like Zoe Saldana, Suki Waterhouse, and Irina Shayk between 2011 and 2019.