Who Is Jennifer Esposito? New Details About Bradley Cooper's Ex-Wife
Jennifer Esposito reacted to Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga's Oscar duet.
Getty If you watched the Oscars this past weekend, you’ll have seen Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform "Shallow” and be left wondering — are these two really in love? Since their performance in A Star Is Born, fans have been openly wishing that Gaga and Bradley’s on-screen romance would translate to off-screen. Towards the end of their Oscar performance, he joined Gaga at the piano, where the two then sang the last verse of the song cheek-to-cheek. They shared a long hug afterward and he even lifted her off the ground a bit. Audience and viewers were drawn into their steamy chemistry. The way Bradley, 44, and Gaga, 32, looked into each other’s eyes made fans think they would end the duet with a kiss.
All the while Bradley’s girlfriend of three years, model Irina Shayk, was sitting right there in the front row of the Dolby Theater. She is obviously confident in their relationship not to be concerned; she was apparently one of the first people on their feet afterward to cheer for the singers. But with Gaga’s engagement to talent agent Christian Carino ending recently, fans are hoping Bradley will ditch his wife girlfriend of three years, Irina Shayk, to marry Gaga instead. Let’s not forget that Gaga and Bradley are actors, and can act their intense sexual chemistry… although many were hoping for more.
Bradley has been married before, to actress Jennifer Esposito. So who is Jennifer Esposito, Bradley Cooper's ex-wife? Here's what we know.
1. She commented on the Bradley/Gaga rumors.
So when actor David Spade, 54, posted an Instagram screen grab of Gaga and Cooper’s performance, where Gaga was completely entranced by him, Esposito chimed in. Spade wrote, “Is there any chance these 2 aren’t f**king?” he asked in the caption. Jennifer Esposito replied with "ha" and nothing else.
The internet then exploded because of her simple “ha” remark, with some reporting the remark was a complete diss to her ex-husband Cooper. Esposito then followed up on Twitter.
“so confused. I get off a flight to see a comment I made of “HA” to a joke from @DavidSpade has gone wild!?. Has everyone gone mad? Somehow I’m insulting an X by laughing at a joke someone else made? Pls take your insanity elsewhere.”
Meanwhile, Gaga took to Instagram to write about what her performance with Cooper meant to her. She wrote, "Nothing could be more special than sharing this moment at the Oscars with a true friend and artistic genius."
2. She’s an actress.
Esposito is known for her roles in the feature films Crash, Summer of Sam, Don't Say a Word, and Welcome to Collinwood. Esposito has also appeared in several television series, most notably Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Spin City, Related, Samantha Who?, Blue Bloods, and Mistresses.
From 2016 to 2017, Esposito played Special Agent Alexandra Quinn on the CBS series NCIS.
3. She's Italian.
Esposito was born on April 11, 1973, in New York City, into a working-class household, the second of two daughters of Phyllis, an interior decorator, and Robert Esposito, a music producer. She is of Italian (Neapolitan) descent. She was raised on Staten Island and is a graduate of Moore Catholic High School.
4. She was married twice.
Esposito married American actor Bradley Cooper on Dec. 30, 2006. In May 2007, after five months of marriage, they filed for divorce, which was finalized that November.
In 2009, Esposito became engaged to Australian tennis player Mark Philippoussis but they separated in August 2010. In May 2014, Esposito announced her engagement to British model Louis Dowler. They married on November 16, 2014, in New York City, but in March 2016, Esposito had filed for divorce.
She's currently dating fitness coach Jesper Vesterstrom in New York.
5. She wrote about her marriage to Cooper.
Esposito married Cooper in 2006, long before Bradley starred in 2009’s The Hangover, but they called it quits just five months later. She wrote about Cooper in her memoir in 2014 titled Jennifer’s Way about the "entire marching band squad of red flags" in her and Bradley's relationship.
“Finding someone to love, who loved me, in this lonely city of Los Angeles was seeming more and more impossible every day," the Crash actress wrote in her book. "Then I met someone and accepted a date."
"I should have noticed the red flags from the beginning—actually, they were more like an entire marching band squad of red flags—but I ignored them because, honestly, I didn't think the relationship was really going to go anywhere," Esposito put it bluntly. "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."
"One date became two, two dates became four," Esposito continued in Jennifer's Way. "We had fun, but he also had a mean, cold side. His personality could flip on a dime, but that kind of behavior was familiar to me. I'd spent plenty of time walking on eggshells in my childhood home as well as on certain sets, so I quickly learned my role in the relationship and went forward accordingly. But the relationship was about him and what he needed, and nothing else... It wasn't all bad all the time, so I figured this was just my lot, and I took the good with the bad, even though the bad was extremely bad."
"Within days, my relationship hit an all-time low, and within a week, it was over," she wrote about the end of the short-lived relationship. "Abruptly, rudely, and with the exact callousness that I'd come to expect from him, but this time, I did nothing but agree to end it."
6. She has celiac.
In 2011, she revealed that she had celiac disease after one of her teeth fell out. Esposito says she went to her doctor and said that she felt like she was “jumping out of [her] skin.” She thought she was going to be checked into the hospital, but instead, she was checked into a psychiatric ward.
“I'm thinking, 'How did I get here? This is a problem with my system, this is not a problem with my brain,’” she recalled in an interview for Oprah: Where Are They Now. “I was almost dead—my hair was falling out, my eyelashes fell off, my fingernails were falling off. I was bad."
Esposito was diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes the small intestine to be hypersensitive to gluten, the protein that’s found in wheat and other grains. Celiac disease can damage the part of the small intestine that allows the body to absorb nutrients, making it difficult for someone with the disease to properly process food.
Maria Lianos-Carbone is author of "Oh Baby! A Mom's Self-Care Survival Guide for the First Year" and publisher of amotherworld.com.
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