Cold Plunges and Cuddling With Cats: Photographing the ‘Great Performers’

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The photographer James Nachtwey showed up at Bradley Cooper’s farmhouse in Pennsylvania one freezing morning in January, armed with a coat and a camera.

“Let’s take a walk,” an affable Mr. Cooper suggested, leading Mr. Nachtwey through his 33-acre property until they arrived at an ice-crusted stream.

After sharing that he practiced mindfulness by taking cold plunges — immersing himself in freezing water for minutes at a time — Mr. Cooper proceeded to strip down to his black briefs and dive in, flipping over onto his back and closing his eyes.

“I thought I’d have 30 seconds to take the picture,” Mr. Nachtwey said in a recent phone conversation from his home in New Hampshire. “But he stayed in for at least 10 minutes.”

The resulting photo of Mr. Cooper, which appears on the cover of this month’s Great Performers issue of The New York Times Magazine, is one of 12 portraits of this award season’s buzziest actors. Mr. Nachtwey captured the images over a three-week period in January in Los Angeles, New York, Pennsylvania and Atlanta.

Among them: Mark Ruffalo training his own camera on street pigeons, Paul Giamatti curled up on a couch with cats at his favorite used bookstore and Emma Stone wandering through steamy Manhattan streets.

Mr. Nachtwey acknowledged that at first he might seem an odd choice for the assignment. He’s photographed many armed conflicts across the world over the last five decades, and before last month, he had never photographed a celebrity.

“It seemed like a real stretch, and I didn’t quite understand it at first,” he said of the assignment. “But then I saw it as a challenge: How could I visually represent the dedication of these actors to their craft?”

In separate phone conversations this week, Mr. Nachtwey and Kathy Ryan, the magazine’s photography director, shared how the photo portfolio came together in just over two months and the challenges of photographing actors in the wild. These are edited excerpts from the talks.

Ms. Ryan, what was your goal with these portraits?

KATHY RYAN Actors get photographed all the time, so we wanted to do something different that would stand out. We wanted to take an unconventional approach — let’s not photograph in a studio, let’s go the documentary route. Jim is one of the greatest war photographers in history. He has an exacting eye and sees beauty. But also, in assigning Jim, I thought he would seek something else in the actors.

Mr. Nachtwey, what convinced you to take the project on?

JAMES NACHTWEY I’m not interested in celebrity or stardom, but I consider actors to be artists, which is something I could relate to and wanted to explore. I thought it would be interesting to examine the things actors do in their daily lives to strengthen their art.

RYAN Despite being a renowned war photographer whose work covers 50 years, in some ways, this was his first time doing this kind of photography, so I respected that he wanted to do it.

Did any actors have a particularly strong vision for their portrait?

NACHTWEY Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor wanted to do something spiritual and mentioned to David Carthas, a photo editor at the magazine, that she likes going to church. We thought she might pray, meditate, read the gospel or do something that would make a picture. But she was very clear that she wanted a portrait that would express her struggle in life.

When I explained that photographing something that had happened in the past would not be possible, she said she would do it through her facial expressions, body language, the clothes she was wearing. I asked her to take charge. She began to sing gospel music quietly to herself, and at one point she started to cry. It was a moment of true emotion, and I managed to capture it.

Tell me more about that photo of Mark Ruffalo studying a Greek statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NACHTWEY He’s a sculptor — and quite a good one — so he wanted to go to the Met and study the Greek sculptures, which he does quite often. After he analyzed a sculpture of Aphrodite, he talked about the different techniques the sculptors had used. I caught the moment when he was adjusting his glasses, so he could see better.

What was your biggest challenge?

NACHTWEY It was finding the best position to put the camera in — the right angle, distance, sense of scale and proportion needed to capture a real moment. I was photographing actors, but they were not acting; they were engaged in things they normally do in their daily lives. It was up to me to capture a genuine moment.

What were your takeaways from the assignment?

NACHTWEY I went into the experience with a real appreciation for their art as actors, and came away with an appreciation for who they are as people.

RYAN He connected with people really quickly, which is something he’s developed in his years of shooting around the world. They let him see something a little more intimate than what they’d normally reveal.