Anderson Cooper is an impassioned journalist, CNN's lead news anchor, and a contributor to CBS News' 60 Minutes. His much-anticipated special, "Planet in Peril," premiered on October 23-24, 2007.
With his taste for on-site reporting, Cooper embodies a new style of advocacy journalism. His electrifying coverage of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans lifted him to national prominence. In July 2007, Cooper moderated the first presidential debate using YouTube technology.
In an infamous, live exchange with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Cooper rose instantly to national prominence when he emotionally interjected "Excuse me...to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other... there are a lot of people here who are very upset and very angry... It just, you know, kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours."
- Silver Plaque from the Chicago Film Festival for his report from Sarajevo on the Bosnian civil war
- Bronze Telly for his coverage of famine in Somalia
- Bron Award from the National Education Film Festival for a report on political Islam
- Outstanding TV Journalism Award from GLAAD for his 20/20 report on gay high school athlete Corey Johnson.
- Birth - June 3, 1967 in New York City, to designer/heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and her 4th (and last) husband, writer Wyatt Cooper. His father died of a heart attack when Cooper was ten years old.
- Education - BA in Political Science/International Relations from Yale University, 1989. Studied the Vietnamese language at University of Hanoi.
- Family - Single, except for his dog, Molly, a Welsh Springer Spaniel
Though born into wealth, the teenage Cooper worked summers as a waiter. He pursued his first job, at age 11, as a Ford model because he "wanted to...be financially independent." Cooper's older brother (by two years) committed suicide in 1988 by jumping from Vanderbilt's 14th floor apartment in New York. Before then, Anderson was on track at Yale to enter foreign diplomatic service. After his brother's death, he took a year off, then pursued a job in TV. Anderson Cooper is mildly dyslexic.
One online biography describes Anderson Cooper as "intelligent, sexy, ambitious and young." The New York Times dubbed him "an anchor who reports disaster news with a heart on his sleeve." Cooper is known for intense immersion into news stories.
Said producer David Perozzi, who worked with Cooper at ABC News, "He's really intense. He could care less how he looks, his hair and makeup. If there's no cameraperson, he grabs the camera....He's all human. He's not putting it on."
"I'd always been interested in travel and dark places on the map. I wanted to see these places and learn things about myself, as well as the people in them. So what I started doing was going to wars with my video camera."
"Neither of my parents believed in joining clubs or being involved in anything that reeked of elitism or exclusiveness. Growing up,'elitest' was the worst thing you could say about someone."
About his work on Hurricane Katrina, Cooper told the New York Times, "This is life and death. This is not some blow-dried pundit standing outraged for some ratings, which is what cable news often boils down to....I have been tearing up on this story more than any story I've worked on...It's hard not to be moved."
