AceShowbiz - Bradley Cooper is "not sure" he'd be alive if he hadn't become a dad."The Hangover" star welcomed daughter Lea with his model ex-girlfriend Irina Shayk in 2017 and he's now admitted raising his little girl prompted him to change his life for the better and put his previous battles with addiction behind him for good.

During an appearance on the "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" podcast, Bradley explained, "I'm not sure I'd be alive if I wasn't a dad ... I just needed someone to say, like, 'We're gonna drop this massive anchor.' I'm like, 'Why? We're speeding! I just got an upgrade on the boat, and I know where the wind's coming in.' They're like, 'No, no, no, there's a tsunami coming in, and you need an anchor and we're gonna drop it.' Because this is gonna dictate everything you do from now on. Your DNA is going to tell you that there's something more important than you."

Bradley went on to insist he changed his life because he wanted to give Lea a more stable upbringing than his own after his early years were blighted by alcoholism in his family.

He added, "I'm a father [seeking to do] the least amount of damage I can do to my daughter. To have a child not grow up in that way ... I want her to have, as much as she can, a foundation that's like 25 feet thick, cement, that she can walk on this earth with. That's the goal. I can just feel the safety that she feels. It's so tangible; it's palpable. That is so fulfilling."

The actor also opened up about his feelings for Lea, admitting he didn't feel the strong love of a father until a couple of months after her birth.

He said, "[For the first couple of months I thought] 'I don't even know if I really love the kid. It's dope. It's cool. I'm watching this thing morph' ... [But] all of a sudden, it's like no question."