Lady Gaga had her breakthrough in her acting career with the 2018 film A Star Is Born. The movie was also Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, and at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday, he revealed that he had considered Adele for Gaga’s role.

According to IndieWire, Cooper was at the film festival to accept the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award for his performance in Maestro. “I thought about Adele for a while,” he said about the role of Ally in A Star Is Born. He explained his thought process for how the plot would go with Adele: “It was like, his career’s not great. He goes abroad. He meets this woman, but no — and then that never even took off at all,” he said. The only acting credit attributed to Adele is a cameo in a 2009 episode of Ugly Betty.

It was also previously known that Beyoncé had dropped off the film before Gaga, and at one point Cooper considered Jack White for his own role. About Beyoncé, Cooper said at the festival, “She was incredible. And we went down the road and then it didn’t work out. I remember I was so nervous. I had this weird cough as I was pitching it to her.”

In December, Adele told Vanity Fair that she hasn’t ruled out an acting career. “There is one movie I want to do, but the guy whose movie it would be, he’s not mentally ready to write the script for it,” she said. “I bug him every now and then about it, but he’s just not there yet. But that’s the only role I ever want. Because I think I’d nail it. I think I’d do really, really, really good at it.”