Anderson Cooper

Anderson Hays Cooper, born June 3, 1967, is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator best known as the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°. He also spent roughly 11 years as a correspondent for CBS News’ 60 Minutes. After earning a Bachelor of Arts from Yale in 1989, Cooper began his career traveling to conflict zones for Channel One News, shooting footage in war-torn areas.

ABC

He joined ABC News as a correspondent in 1995, later taking on roles as a co-anchor, reality game show host, and fill-in morning talk show host. In 2001, he moved to CNN, where his own program debuted in 2003; he has hosted it ever since. Cooper gained widespread recognition for his on-the-ground reporting of breaking news, particularly his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which sharply boosted his popularity. His reporting on the 2010 Haiti earthquake earned him the National Order of Honour and Merit, Haiti’s highest honor.

Awards

From 2011 to 2013, he hosted the syndicated daytime talk show Anderson Live. Over his career, Cooper has won 18 Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and an Edward Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club in 2011. A member of the Vanderbilt family, he publicly came out as gay in 2012, becoming “the most prominent gay journalist on American television,” and has received multiple GLAAD Media Awards.

Early life and education

Cooper was born in Manhattan to writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and artist Gloria Vanderbilt. His maternal grandparents were millionaire equestrian Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and socialite Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt; his great-great-grandfather was Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the family’s shipping and railroad fortune. He has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus “Stan” Stokowski and Christopher Stokowski, from his mother’s marriage to conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 2014, Cooper appeared on Finding Your Roots, learning of an ancestor, Burwell Boykin, who was a slave owner.

He grew up in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and in Southampton, New York. His media exposure began early: as a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper’s Bazaar; at age three, he appeared on The Tonight Show with his mother; at nine, he was an impostor on To Tell the Truth; and from ages 10 to 13, he modeled for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Macy’s. His father died on January 5, 1978, at age 50, after a series of heart attacks during open-heart surgery.

Cooper considers his father’s book Families a guide for his life. When Cooper was 21, his older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, died by suicide at age 23, jumping from the family’s 14th-floor terrace. His mother later wrote A Mother’s Story, attributing the suicide to a psychotic episode from an asthma drug. Carter’s death sparked Anderson’s interest in journalism.

Cooper attended the Dalton School, graduating a semester early at age 17, then traveled around Africa for several months, contracting malaria and being hospitalized in Kenya. He later attended Yale, living in Trumbull College, serving as a coxswain on the lightweight rowing team, joining the Manuscript Society, and majoring in political science, graduating in 1989. During college, he interned at the Central Intelligence Agency for two summers.

Channel One

He pursued journalism without formal training, calling himself a “news junkie since [he] was in utero.” After Yale, he failed to get an entry-level job at ABC and instead worked as a fact checker for Channel One. With a forged press pass, he entered Myanmar alone to meet student protesters. He then lived in Vietnam for a year studying Vietnamese, persuading Channel One to let him film reports with a Hi8 camera.

In 1992, he covered Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. By 1994, he felt desensitized to violence, finding the Rwandan genocide’s horrors trivial, until a specific incident snapped him out of it. In 1995, he became a correspondent for ABC.