Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator who anchors the CNN news broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360°. In addition to his duties at CNN, for two decades Cooper served as a correspondent for 60 Minutes, produced by CBS News. After graduating from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1989, he began traveling the world, shooting footage of war-torn regions for Channel One News. Cooper was hired by ABC News as a correspondent in 1995, but he soon took more jobs throughout the network, working for a short time as a co-anchor, reality game show host, and fill-in morning talk show host.
In 2001, Cooper joined CNN, where he was given his own show, Anderson Cooper 360°; he has remained the show's host since. He developed a reputation for his on-the-ground reporting of breaking news events, with his coverage of Hurricane Katrina causing his popularity to sharply increase. For his coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Cooper received a National Order of Honour and Merit, the highest honor granted by the Haitian government. From September 2011 to May 2013, he also served as the host of his own syndicated television daytime talk show, Anderson Live.
Cooper has won 18 Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, as well as an Edward Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club in 2011. A member of the Vanderbilt family, he came out as gay in 2012, becoming "the most prominent gay journalist on American television". In 2016, Cooper became the first LGBT person to moderate a presidential debate, and he has received several GLAAD Media Awards.
Early life and education
Cooper was born in Manhattan, New York City, the younger son of writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and artist Gloria Vanderbilt. His maternal grandparents were millionaire equestrian Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt of the Vanderbilt family and socialite Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and Reginald's patrilineal great-grandfather was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune. He has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus "Stan" Stokowski (b. 1950) and Christopher Stokowski (b. 1952), from Gloria's ten-year marriage to conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 2014, Cooper appeared in Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Finding Your Roots, where he learned of an ancestor, Burwell Boykin, who was a slave owner from the southern United States.
Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar. At the age of three, Cooper was a guest on The Tonight Show on September 17, 1970, appearing with his mother. At the age of nine, he appeared on To Tell the Truth as an impostor. From age 10 to 13, Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.
Wyatt experienced a series of heart attacks while undergoing open-heart surgery, and died January 5, 1978, at the age of 50. Cooper considers his father's book Families to be "sort of a guide on... how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him." Cooper attended Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College and was a coxswain on the lightweight rowing team. He was inducted into the Manuscript Society and majored in political science, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1989.
Career
Early career
During college, Cooper spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency while studying political science. He pursued journalism with no formal journalistic education.
Channel One
After Cooper graduated from Yale, he tried to gain entry-level employment with ABC answering telephones, but was unsuccessful. Finding it hard to get his foot in the door of on-air reporting, Cooper decided to enlist the help of a friend in making a fake press pass. At the time, Cooper was working as a fact checker for the small news agency Channel One, which produced a youth-oriented news program that was broadcast to many junior high and high schools in the United States. Cooper then entered Myanmar on his own with his forged press pass and met with students fighting the Burmese government. As of 2019, he still periodically serves as guest co-host on Live when one of the two hosts cannot go in to work.
CNN
thumb|Anderson Cooper covering the Trump/Kim Summit in Singapore, 2018
Cooper left The Mole after its second season to return to broadcast news. In 2001, he joined CNN, commenting, "Two seasons was enough, and 9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news."
In September 2005, the format of CNN's NewsNight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent hurricane season. To help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future". Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for NewsNight increased significantly; Klein remarked that "[Cooper's] name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue." To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on November 2, 2005. Cooper's 360° program would be expanded to two hours and shifted into the 10:00 pm ET slot formerly held by NewsNight, with the third hour of Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room filling in Cooper's former 7:00 pm ET slot. With "no options" left for him to host shows, Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter.
right|thumb|upright|Cooper at the [[First inauguration of Barack Obama|inauguration of President Obama in Washington, D.C., 2009]]
In early 2007, Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN that would allow him to continue as a contributor to 60 Minutes, as well as doubling his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million.
The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
On April 16, 2023, CNN launched a new Sunday primetime series, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.
CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute
In 2007, he began hosting CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute, a show about extraordinary deeds by ordinary people.
Planet in Peril documentary
In October 2007, Cooper began hosting the documentary Planet in Peril with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN. In 2008, Cooper, Gupta, and Lisa Ling from National Geographic Explorer teamed up for a sequel, Planet in Peril: Battle Lines, which premiered in December 2008.
Syndicated talk show: Anderson Live
In September 2010, Warner Bros. and Telepictures (both corporate siblings of CNN) announced that Cooper had signed an agreement to host a nationally syndicated talk show. The journalist Brian Stelter (at the time employed by The New York Times, and now by CNN), reported on Twitter that the new Warner Bros. daytime talk show would be named Anderson (now titled Anderson Live). The show premiered on September 12, 2011, and as part of negotiations over the talk show deal, Cooper signed a new multi-year contract with CNN to continue as the host of Anderson Cooper 360°. On October 29, 2012, it was announced that Anderson Live would end at the conclusion of its second season. The show, slightly renamed after season one and revamped with a variety of co-hosts, failed to achieve the ratings distributor Warner Brothers hoped for. The final Anderson Live aired on May 30, 2013.
2016 presidential debates
Along with Martha Raddatz, Cooper moderated the second presidential election debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This made him the first LGBT person to moderate a presidential debate in the general election.
New Year's Eve
In 2017, Cooper's close friend, Andy Cohen, joined Cooper in succeeding Kathy Griffin as co-host of CNN's New Year's Eve coverage. They again co-hosted CNN's New Year's Eve for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025.
60 Minutes
thumb |upright |Cooper at the 71st Annual [[Peabody Awards (Astoria Hotel, May 21, 2012)]]
Cooper became a correspondent for the CBS News program 60 Minutes in the 2006–2007 season, concurrently serving as a CNN anchor and correspondent. He left the CBS role in 2026.
Other work
AC2
Andy Cohen and Cooper announced that they would be going on a national tour to perform their conversational stage show AC2 beginning in March 2015. The tour opened in Boston, followed by Miami Beach, Chicago and Atlanta. Since then, the two-man show has continued to tour, reaching more than fifty cities as of October 2018.
Broadway
Cooper was the narrator for the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, directed by Rob Ashford and starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Writings
A freelance writer, Cooper has authored a variety of articles that have appeared in many other outlets, including Details magazine.
In May 2006, Cooper published a memoir for HarperCollins, Dispatches from the Edge, detailing his life and work in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana over the previous year. Some of the book's proceeds are donated to charity. The book topped The New York Times Best Seller list on June 18, 2006.
In 2017, Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, co-authored The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss. Compiled from a series of emails, the memoir recounts their shared past, and Vanderbilt's tumultuous childhood. Cooper said his goal in writing the book and correspondence was to leave "nothing left unsaid" between the pair. It landed on multiple best-seller lists the year of its publication.
Jeopardy!
From April 19 to 30, 2021, Cooper served as a guest host on Jeopardy! following the death of Alex Trebek.
Podcast: All There Is
thumb|Cooper recording a podcast episode with US president [[Joe Biden in 2023]]
In 2022, Cooper launched a deeply personal podcast exploring grief and loss. On the show, he interviews other notable people on their experiences with grief. Guests have included TV host Stephen Colbert, musician Laurie Anderson and comedian Molly Shannon. The inspiration for the podcast came from his own life. Reflecting on the loss of his father when he was 10, the loss of his brother to suicide at 21, and the more recent loss of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt, he said "What has struck me is the degree to which I had not dealt with this stuff at all." He shared that he wanted to explore this universal human experience. "I just felt like, 'Why am I so alone in this? This is something we all go through.' And this idea gave me great strength, that I'm on a road that has been traveled by everybody, in one form or another. Why every time somebody is going down this road should it feel like the first time?"
Cooper won a 2023 Webby Award for Best Series for All There Is. His 5-word acceptance speech was "All There Is, Is Love."
Personal life
thumb|Cooper in 2018
As of 2016, Cooper was not registered to any political party.
In 2008, Cooper told Oprah Winfrey he had dyslexia as a child.
Cooper played Dungeons & Dragons with his brother as a child. He later said that it gave him and his brother an escape from the grief of their father's death.
Cooper is gay; , he was (according to The New York Times) "the most prominent openly gay journalist on American television". For years, Cooper avoided discussing his private life in interviews. On July 2, 2012, however, he gave Andrew Sullivan permission to publish an email that stated, in part:
In 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook sought Cooper's advice before making the decision to publicly come out as gay.
In 2014, Cooper and his long-term partner at the time, Benjamin Maisani, purchased Rye House, a historic estate in Connecticut. In March 2018, Cooper confirmed that he and Maisani had split up.
Cooper was friends with Anthony Bourdain, celebrity chef and host of the CNN series Parts Unknown. After Bourdain died by suicide on June 8, 2018, Cooper paid tribute to him in a CNN special program, Remembering Anthony Bourdain. Cooper also paid tribute to Bourdain on the Thanksgiving 2020 episode of Anderson Cooper Full Circle, saying that he was "proud to call Anthony Bourdain a friend", and adding: "He is so, so missed by so many."
In 2021, Cooper and co-author Katherine Howe published Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, a history of the Vanderbilt family going back to his Vanderbilt ancestors who came to New Amsterdam in the 17th century.
Children
On April 30, 2020, Cooper announced the birth of his son Wyatt Morgan Cooper to a surrogate mother on April 27. "On Monday I became a father. I've never said that out loud and it astonishes me. I have a son," he said at the end of a CNN Town Hall on his show, Anderson Cooper 360°. He added, "Most of all, I am grateful to a remarkable surrogate who carried Wyatt, and watched over him lovingly, and tenderly...." He also went on to make an announcement on Instagram, stating that "Wyatt Morgan Cooper was born on Monday weighing ."
Though Cooper and Benjamin Maisani are no longer romantically involved, the pair co-parent the child and Maisani was present in the delivery room for Wyatt's birth. Wyatt is named after Cooper's late father, Wyatt Cooper, and his middle name is derived from the maiden name of his maternal grandmother Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt.
On February 10, 2022, Cooper announced at the beginning of his show on CNN that he had just become a father for a second time to a son named Sebastian Luke Maisani-Cooper. Maisani is in the process of adopting Cooper's son Wyatt, after which Wyatt's surname will become Maisani-Cooper.
Awards
thumb|Cooper accepting a [[Peabody Award in 2012 for CNN's coverage of the Arab Spring]]
Cooper helped lead CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and the network's Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award-winning coverage of the 2004 tsunami. He has won 18 Emmy Awards, including two for his coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, and an Edward R. Murrow Award.
{| class="wikitable"
|- style="text-align:center;"
! Year !! Award !! Organization !! Work !! Category !! Result
|-
|1993
|Bronze Telly
|Telly Awards
|Coverage of famine in Somalia
|
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|1997
|Emmy Award
|ATAS/NATAS
|Coverage of Princess Diana's funeral
|
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|2001
|GLAAD Media Award
|GLAAD
|20/20 Downtown: "High School Hero"report on high school athlete Corey Johnson.
|Outstanding TV Journalism
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|National Headliner Award
|Press Club of Atlantic City
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Wave of Destruction"2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami coverage
|Coverage of a Major News Event
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="4" |2006
|rowspan="3" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="3" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Charity Hospital"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Starving in Plain Sight"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award
|Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
|CNN for Coverage of the Tsunami Disaster in South Asia
|
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="4" |2007
|rowspan="3" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="3" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Sago Mines"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "High Rise Crash"
|Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Lighting Direction & Scenic Design
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|rowspan="6" |2008
|rowspan="2" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="2" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Unapproved Drugs"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Chicago Police Brutality"
|Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Michael Ware 2007 Coverage of Iraq"
|Continuing Coverage of a Major News Event
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="3" |2009
|rowspan="3" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="3" |ATAS/NATAS
|60 Minutes: "War against Women"
|Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a News Magazine
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|CNN's Coverage of the Democratic National Convention
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|CNN's Coverage of Election Night 2008
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|National Headliner Awards
|Press Club of Atlantic City
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Inside the Battle Zone: Afghanistan"
|Continuing Coverage of a Major News Event
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="8" |2011
|rowspan="2" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="2" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Haiti in Ruins"
|Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Crisis in Haiti"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Black or White: Kids on Race"
|Investigative Reporting
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Haiti Earthquake"
|David Kaplan Award
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="7" |2012
|Peabody Award
|Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
|CNN's Reporting on the Arab Spring
|
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="3" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="3" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Bullying: It Stops Here"
|Outstanding News Discussion & Analysis
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Unrest Escalates in Egypt"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|CNN/CNNi Breaking News Simulcast: "Revolution in Egypt: President Mubarak Steps Down"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|GLAAD Media Award
|GLAAD
|Anderson Cooper 360: "The 'Sissy Boy' Experiments"
|Outstanding TV JournalismNews Magazine
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|Lew Klein Awards
|Temple University Klein College of Media and Communication
|
|Excellence Honoree
|style="background:#ddf;" |Awarded
|-
|rowspan="5" |2013
|rowspan="4" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="4" |ATAS/NATAS
|60 Minutes: "Three Generations of Punishment"
|Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a News Magazine
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture"
|Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|CNN: "Election Night in America"
|Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News StoryLong Form
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="4" |2014
|rowspan="4" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="4" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Boston Bombing Victim Vows to Dance Again"
|Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Guns Under Fire: An AC360 Town Hall"
|Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|rowspan="6" |2016
|rowspan="5" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="5" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Europe's Refugee Crisis"
|Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|60 Minutes: "Lumber Liquidators"
|Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a News Magazine
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "#BeingThirteen: Inside the Secret World of Teens"
|Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|rowspan="9" |2017
|rowspan="9" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="9" |ATAS/NATAS
|60 Minutes: "The Music of Zomba Prison"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a Newsmagazine
|style="background:#dfd;" |Won
|-
|60 Minutes: "The Brothers Rosenberg"
|Outstanding Feature Story in a Newsmagazine
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Pulse Nightclub Massacre"
|Outstanding Breaking News Coverage
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Manchester Concert Attack
|Outstanding Breaking News Coverage
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Sally Yates and Anderson Cooper"
|Outstanding Edited Interview
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism
|Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
|
|
|style="background:#ddf;" |Awarded
|-
|rowspan="6" |2019
|rowspan="6" |Emmy Award
|rowspan="6" |ATAS/NATAS
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Undercover with Nigeria's Pushermen"
|Outstanding Investigative Report in a Newscast
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute
|Outstanding News Special
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|60 Minutes: "Stormy Daniels"
|Outstanding Edited Interview
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Anderson Cooper Interviews Facebook's Monika Bickert"
|Outstanding Live Interview
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|Anderson Cooper 360: "Anderson Cooper Pays Tribute to his Mom, Gloria Vanderbilt"
|Outstanding Writing
|style="background:#fdd;" |Nominated
|-
|2023
|Webby Award for Best Series (Podcast)
|Webby Awards
|"All There Is" Podcast
|Best Series (Podcast)
|Won (People's Voice)
|-
|2024
|Ambie Award for Best Podcast Host
|The Podcast Academy
|"All There Is" podcast
|Best Podcast Host
|Nominated
|}
Other awards
- Silver Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival for his report from Sarajevo on the Bosnian War
- Bronze Award from the National Education Film and Video Festival for a report on political Islam
- 2001–2002: The Mole host
Filmography
- Chappie (2015)
- The 33 (2015)
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Books
- Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival (Harper Perennial, 2006). .
- The Rainbow Comes and Goes (Harper Perennial, 2016). .
- Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. Hardcover – September 21, 2021
- Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune. Harper – September 19, 2023
See also
- LGBT culture in New York City
- List of LGBT people from New York City
- New Yorkers in journalism
References
External links
- Anderson Cooper 360° Blog
- CNN: Anchors & Reporters: Anderson Cooper (profile)
- Anderson Cooper: The Silver Fox