Bradley Cooper wants to play one of the title characters in Baz Luhrmann's upcoming The Great Gatsby adaptation: Jay Gatsby's rival Tom Buchanan.

"To me, he's the best character in the book. He's so complicated," Bradley Cooper said. "He's xenophobic, he's an alcoholic, but he also understands some profound stuff about class. Whoever plays it has to take a gentle hand, because it could so easily be stock, where he's a rich jerk you don't identify with at all."

"I don't even know if I'm on Baz Luhrmann's radar," he said. "Maybe he'll read this article after the role's cast and say, 'Oh. Ha. Yeah, that guy was never going to get it.' "

But director Baz Luhrmann recently said that news/the-great-gatsby-not-shooting-anytime-soon-says-baz-luhrmann|filming on The Great Gatsby won't be happening anytime soon.

The adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.