Tall, Dark And STILL Handsome!

When silver fox Anderson Cooper was tall, DARK and handsome: A rare look at his office, quirky hobby, weird eating habits and troubled past

By Brian Clark Howard

Last updated at 6:43 PM on 17th May 2011

It may be shocking to some, but CNN star journalist Anderson Cooper didn't always have gray hair.

In an intimate video tour of his office with fellow 'AC360' reporter Vladimir Duthiers, Anderson Cooper, 43, said: 'I started with Flock of Seagulls brown hair, then evolved into the gray ghost that I now appear'.

Mr Cooper also joked about his strange hobby, collecting hand-painted African signs, and shared memories of his career and troubled family.

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Mr Duthiers, who Mr Cooper called 'Vlad', said: 'We're standing in the lair of the silver fox'.

After Mr Cooper appeared embarrassed by the moniker, Mr Duthiers teased, 'You know you love that name. It's cool. I wish I had that name'.

The two colleagues also showed off Mr Cooper's wall-mounted collages of press passes that the star anchor had collected over his 20-year career.

They showcased his first press pass, which they said Mr Cooper and friends had 'faked' and 'forged' shortly after he graduated from college (Yale University). That was in 1989, and he completed a major in political science.





'I started out of college with a fake press pass, I went to a war', Mr Cooper said. Mr Dutheirs added that it was to Southeast Asia (specifically Myanmar).

After graduating, Mr Cooper had tried to get a job answering phones at ABC, but wasn't hired. He hadn't received any formal training in journalism, though he has said he was a 'news junkie' since being 'in utero'.

While in college, he had spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency, but decided he didn't want to pursue a career at the agency.

Mr Cooper soon started working as a fact checker for Channel One, which makes youth-centred news reports to be broadcast in schools. After his self-financed reporting trip to Myanmar, he was able to sell the news segments he self-produced there to Channel One, launching his broadcast career.



Shortly after that, he returned to Southeast Asia to study the Vietnamese language for a year. He produced more news segments and sold them to Channel One.

Back in his office, Mr Cooper showed Mr Duthiers more of his legitimate press passes for subsequent years, from reporting trips to Bosnia, Croatia, Israel, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Cambodia and elsewhere.

Mr Cooper said: 'What's a little bit alarming about seeing all these press passes is it's basically just watching me age over the years'.

In a reflective moment, he said: 'I used to see people from CNN, like Christiane Amanpour, in vehicles, and I dreamed of one day having a vehicle in a war zone, or even a bullet proof vest...it was really stupid [not wearing one in conflict zones]'.


The anchor also showed off his collection of hand-painted signs from Africa, which he jokingly admitted is a strange hobby. He talked about offering a shop owner in Congo $100 for one, which delighted the man.

Mr Cooper also pointed to the collection of photos on a wall, many of the shots showing friends, family and scenes from his travels around the world.

He said: 'I think it's important to remember them and to honour them and to think about them, so I try to keep a lot of people's pictures up on the wall'.

He pointed to a picture of himself as a young boy in New Orleans with his father, writer Wyatt Emory Cooper, who died of heart disease in January 1978 at the age of 50.



Mr Cooper also showed a portrait of his mother and brother.

His mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, is an artist, designer and socialite of the famous Vanderbilt family. Anderson Cooper is the great-great-great-grandson of railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Mr Cooper's older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on July 22, 1988, at age 23, by leaping from the family's 14th-floor luxury apartment in New York City. Ms Vanderbilt later claimed the young man had a psychotic episode caused by an allergic reaction to an anti-asthma medication.

In his office, Mr Cooper also showed off his lunch, which he said came from Boston Market.



He said: 'I eat the same meal pretty much every day, which is Boston Market turkey...it's like Thanksgiving every day'.

He said he 'eats the same thing every day for a month, until I get sick of it. I like the consistency'.

In May, Mr Cooper struggled to keep a straight face when co-workers surprised him by putting up a goofy picture of him at age nine, complete with giant hair, during a report about current teen star Justin Bieber.

He said: 'I'm just thinking about people I'm gonna fire'.

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