WATCH: Bradley Cooper In the Trailer for American Sniper

Bradley Cooper is all over the place these days, and he seems to be making waves and headlines wherever he goes. Critics are eating him up in The Elephant Man, playing now on Broadway, and he’s getting tons of hype for his turn as kickass Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. The first trailers for the film rolled out this week, showing the beefed-up Jenkintown native in a role that he has said it was an honor to portray.

According to People, Kyle served four tours in Iraq, and, upon his return home, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was able to overcome it and eventually helped other vets who were suffering, until he was killed last February. “There’s something about how stoic he was, and it was all sort of in his eyes as a human being, how gentle he was, how complicated he was, and it was really sort of a practice in almost doing nothing and just sort of trusting that whatever’s going inside is going to read,” Cooper told reporters at this week’s premiere in New York City.

Several critics are calling it his career’s shining moment to date, but surprisingly he was snubbed at the recent SAG and Golden Globes nominations. There’s still time to nab an Oscar nod. The film debuts in theaters on Christmas Day.