Bradley Cooper wanted Howard Stern to shave his head and appear in A Star Is Born

Bradley Cooper and Howard Stern are longtime pals — and now they're revealing that they almost played brothers in A Star Is Born.

On Monday's episode of The Howard Stern Show, the actor and the shock jock discussed their near-collaboration in Cooper's 2018 directorial debut, which famously costarred Lady Gaga and won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

"I've told two or three people in my life that you offered me that role in A Star Is Born, and they look at me like, 'What the f---, you didn't do it?'" Stern explained. "And I go, 'No, I think the guy who ended up doing the role was fantastic!'"

The part in question was Bobby Maine, the older brother and manager of Cooper's rock star, Jackson Maine. The role ultimately went to Sam Elliott, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance, losing to Mahershala Ali for Green Book.

"You came to me and you said, 'Hey, you will play my brother,'" Stern recalled. "And I went, 'Whoa, he must think I'm a lot better looking than… They’re gonna be like, 'What the f---, what is it, this movie gonna be like Twins?' I'm Danny DeVito and he's Arnold Schwarzenegger or something? I dunno, what the hell's going on here?"

Cooper went on to explain that the role was written vaguely enough to shape the character around whichever actor took the part, so Stern wouldn't have necessarily played Bobby as a Sam Elliott type.

Stern said he seriously considered joining the movie, which would have been his first film performance since 1997's Private Parts: "I went, 'No s---, that's kind of intriguing.' I said, 'I'm gonna go full-on into it. I'm gonna shave my head, I’m gonna change my whole look.' I was really toying with the idea."

"You said, 'Give me a couple weeks,'" Cooper remembered. "It wasn't like you said no right away. I feel like there were three weeks of me sort of standing by, right? You really contemplated this." Cooper also was enthusiastic about Stern's potential physical transformation. "When we started talking about you shaving your head, that was very exciting," he said.

"Can you imagine? I was also gonna shave my head for Maestro," Stern joked, referring to Cooper's latest film. "Maybe we'll do [it] one day."

"I think it's gonna happen, man. I think it's gonna happen," Cooper said. "I just have to figure out the right thing so that you'll say yes."

Cooper's Maestro, a biopic about composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, is now playing in select theaters and will debut on Netflix on Dec. 20.

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