Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk split in 2019 after four years together, but even though the famous exes couldn't make their romantic relationship work, they have been successful as a parenting partnership for their 6-year-old daughter, Lea De Seine Shayk Cooper. Now, the model is opening up about co-parenting with her ex.
The Russian-born supermodel revealed in a November 2023 interview with Elle that the former couple have made a concerted effort to give their young daughter as regular a childhood as possible, despite the star power of her parents. That means neither Shayk nor Cooper employ a nanny in New York City, where they co-parent Lea, and instead "take Lea everywhere with [them]," including daily walks to school:
We both take Lea everywhere with us. She’s super easy. Two days ago, I had to go to the gym, so I just got her a drawing book and said, ‘Mama’s working out.’ She was drawing for an hour. Then we went to the Michael Kors fitting. She met all the girls. Michael gave her a bag. She drew him a kitty cat.
Lea's famous father even recently took her as his date to the premiere of Maestro, the critically acclaimed Leonard Bernstein biopic Cooper directed and starred in as the famed conductor. For the occasion, which took place on Tuesday, December 12 at Los Angeles' Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Bradley's date was dressed in a Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print chiffon dress, sparkling gold ballet flats and a red crossbody purse, per People, while her dad sported a dark navy suit.
Shayk praised Cooper in the Elle interview, calling him "the best father" to Lea, and she said their co-parenting arrangement "always works because we make it work."
We always find a way. He’s the best father Lea and I could dream of. It always works, but it always works because we make it work.
Irina previously wrote in an April 2023 essay for Harper's Bazaar how her daughter is "a big part" of why the model started to love herself more and about the values she and Cooper as trying to instill in their child:
My daughter is a big part of why I started to love myself even more. She’ll say, 'I love Daddy so much, I love Mama so much, I love Nana, I love Babulya—' who is my mom. Then she goes, 'And I really love myself.' And I’m looking at my daughter and I’m like, 'Wow, I wasn’t like that at six years old.' You know what I mean? I didn’t have her thoughts at six years old. But this is what we need to teach our kids. We’re teaching our daughter that the most important thing is to be kind to people. Every time we send her to school, we’re like, 'Just remember kindness and love.'
Since her break-up from Bradley in 2019, Shayk has been involved in several high-profile romances, being spotted in Paris with Kanye West, hanging out at Coachella with Leonardo DiCaprio and, most recently, football star Tom Brady, from whom Irina allegedly split in October 2023. Cooper himself has been romantically busy this year with another supermodel, Gigi Hadid.
But no matter who the former pair is partnered up with these days, it's clear they don't let their dating situations get in the way of raising their daughter together.
