Anderson Cooper Biography

Anderson Cooper is the blue-eyed boy with the silver hair who anchors the CNN weeknight news program Anderson Cooper 360. Over the past few years, Anderson has gained himself quite a reputation for searching out news stories in some of the world’s most dangerous places.

Born in New York on June 3, 1967, the youngest son of Wyatt Emory Cooper and the socialite designer, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson and his older brother by two years, Carter, grew up in a household which was visited by famous actors and artists. Among the famous were Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, frequent guests at his mother’s parties.

Anderson graduated from The Dalton School in New York City in 1984 and then went on to Yale University where he graduated in 1989 with a B.A. in political science. In 1990, he lived for a year in Vietnam and studied at the University of Hanoi and learned to speak Vietnamese.

Anderson decided he wanted to follow a career in journalism and tried to gain entry level employment with the ABC news channel, without success. Eventually he took a job with Channel One News in New York as a fact checker.

He soon decided that he wanted to become a reporter and took himself, independently, overseas with his own video camera and started covering stories around the globe and selling them to Channel One.

Anderson covered stories in many war-torn regions around the world including, Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

In 1995, Anderson became a correspondent for the ABC news channel and rose to co-anchor of World News Now. In 2000, he switched career paths within the industry and began hosting the ABC reality show The Mole.

However, he left The Mole after the second season and returned to reporting, this time for CNN. His first position at CNN was alongside fellow anchor Paula Zahn on American Morning. In 2002, he became CNN’s primetime anchor.

Since 2003 he has been the presenter of Anderson Cooper 360, a fast, informative and sometimes amusing news program which now runs for two hours each week night straight after the Larry King show at 10 pm ET.

After covering the New Years Eve celebrations in Times Square, New York, which he does every year, Anderson found himself in South East Asia reporting on the tsunami, which left the region devastated, with thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

He is often seen covering events such as hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and in Florida, the war in Iraq, and most recently the war in Lebanon.

In August 2005, Anderson covered the famine in Niger. His interest in the genocide and atrocities in many of the African states has remained a constant quest in his attempt to bring the world to our television screens.

Then came Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. Anderson was in Mississippi interviewing Senator Mary Landrieu, and while she was fully praising the government for its brilliant response to the disaster, Anderson famously interrupted her saying, "For the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi... I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are upset, and very angry, and very frustrated..."

In his Vanity Fair interview of June of 2006, Anderson recalls meeting other celebrities while covering Katrina: Dr Phil, Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, and Steven Segal.

At the end of 2005, Anderson was named the Media Person of the Year in the annual online poll by I Want Media.

Anderson also does freelance writing for Details magazine.

In May 2006, he released a book entitled Dispatches from the Edges, detailing his experiences in Africa, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and his childhood memories from Louisiana and Mississippi. By June 18, 2006, his book topped the New York Times bestseller list and Anderson went on a whirlwind book signing tour around America.

Although Anderson searches out regions of the world where grief and despair are rife, and it would appear he comes from a charmed background, he once said "Neither of my parents believed in joining clubs or being involved in anything that reeked of elitism or exclusiveness. Growing up 'elitist' was the worst thing you could say about someone." 

It is believed that his impassioned reporting is a product of suffering great loss in his own personal life. At the age of ten Anderson lost his beloved father Wyatt to a fatal heart attack. When Anderson was twenty-one years old and away at university, his older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide by jumping from the fourteenth floor balcony of his mother’s Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan. He speaks frequently about both losses in his book.

Anderson’s sensitivity when interviewing people is attributed to his own experiences of losing people close to him during his life. One particular event in which his sympathies came to the fore was during his extensive coverage of the Sago mine disaster in early January of 2006.

One of Anderson’s best publicized interviews was on June 19, 2006, with Angelina Jolie, girlfriend of Brad Pitt. Just four days after returning from Namibia, Angelina contacted CNN and requested that Anderson conduct the interview because she knew of his interest in Africa and she wanted an interview that concentrated on her interest in the plight of refugees in that part of the world, not one that was centered around her, her films, and her life with Brad.

Other memorable interviews Anderson has conducted have been with the then secretary of state, Colin Powell in December of 2004 and tsunami survivor, Sports Illustrated model Petra Nemcova.

Anderson's mother once told him that in life he should "follow his bliss" a theory that comes the writer Joseph Campbell who would tell his students his general formula is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it. , and it seems that Anderson has taken that advice.

Anderson is single and now lives in New York City with his dog, Molly.

Let us know of updates to the Anderson Cooper biography at editor@yuddy.com