How Bradley Cooper Wove My Parents’ Truth into the Fabric of Maestro

TIME
By Jamie Bernstein
December 20, 2023

Five years ago, my dad would have turned 100. The Leonard Bernstein Centennial was a pretty big deal—but I didn’t really grasp the scope of my father’s impact until I started traveling around the country giving talks about my memoir, Famous Father Girl, which came out that same year. Everywhere I went, I met scores of older people who had been there: at Carnegie Hall, at Tanglewood, at the Kennedy Center, and beyond. They’d bought the records; they knew his Broadway shows. The Lenny fan base lives!