He liked sports and kept in shape with hiking and riding, tennis and golf, archery and skiing, trout fishing and spear fishing, swimming and scuba diving and driving fast cars. He liked boxing.
He signed a six year contract with Samuel Goldwyn, to make six pictures at $150,000 per picture. At the time Paramount had legal rights to Cooper and threatened to sue. The two companies came to an understanding that Paramount would loan Cooper to Goldywn to make one picture a year from 1938-1942.
He starred in two movies that were based on novels by Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1932) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
He turned down both Stagecoach (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939).
He underwent four hernia operations between 1951 and 1953.
He was a close friend and admirer of Pablo Picasso.
He was a close friend of Bing Crosby, who named his eldest son after Cooper.
He was a conservative Republican. He voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, and for Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932. He actively campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940, strongly believing that Franklin D. Roosevelt should serve no more than two terms of office, and endorsed Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.
He was fond of dogs, at various times he owned boxers, Dobermans and Great Danes. He and his wife also raised Sealyhams.
He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life.
He was originally supposed to play the leading role in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), but Harry Cohn refused to loan Cooper out so James Stewart was cast instead.
He was very popular with audiences over a long period of time, his popularity exceeding that of "The King" Clark Gable himself at the box office. Named the #1 Box Office Star of 1953 in the Top 10 Poll of Money-Making Stars, as ranked by Quigley Publications' annual survey of movie exhibitors. He made the list 18 times from 1936 to 1957, which was a record when he died in 1961. Of his contemporaries, John Wayne (who accepted Cooper's 1952 Best Actor Oscar for High Noon (1952)) established the still-standing record of Box Office success with 25 appearances in the Top 10 between 1949 and 1974.
He was voted the 18th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
He was voted the 42nd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
He wasn't present to receive his Academy Award in February 1953, for his portrayal of Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (1952). He asked John Wayne to accept it on his behalf.
He won an Oscar for playing Alvin C. York in Sergeant York (1941), making him one of 13 actors to win the Award for playing a real person who was still alive at the evening of the Award ceremony (as of 2007). The other 11 actors and their respective performances are: Spencer Tracy for playing 'Father Edward Flanagan' in Boys Town (1938), Patty Duke for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), Jason Robards for playing Benjamin C. Bradlee in All the President's Men (1976), Robert De Niro for playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), Sissy Spacek for playing Loretta Lynn in
His appetite was prodigious, but no matter how much he ate, he always remained thin. During his early years in Hollywood, working odd jobs and living with his parents, he said, he said with some comic exaggeration, that his "starvation diet at the time ran to no less than a dozen eggs a day, a couple of loaves of bread, a platter of bacon, and just enough pork chops between meals to keep me going until I got home for supper." His specialty on hunting trips was gargantuan: wild duck covered with bacon strips, enhanced by four eggs and steak. He could eat a cherry pie and drink a quart of milk for lunch.
His daughter, Maria Veronica Balfe Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. She now goes by her married name, Maria Cooper Janis.
His estate was valued at $9 million at the time of his death in 1961.
His father Charles Cooper died of pneumonia on September 18th 1946, three months after Gary completed Cloak and Dagger (1946) and 3 days after his father's 81st birthday.