42 interesting facts about Anderson Cooper: photographed as a baby for Harper’s Bazaar

Anderson Cooper is an American journalist, author, and television personality. Here are 50 interesting facts about this talented journalist and celebrity.

1. Anderson was born on June 3, 1967 in New York City, NY.

2. His full name is Anderson Hays Cooper.

3. He was born into one of the wealthiest and most respected families in New York. Cooper is the son of heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, and the great-great-great-grandson of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.

4. He is also a descendant, through his mother, of Civil War brevet Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, who was with General William T. Sherman on his march through Georgia.

5. He was photographed as a baby by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar.

6. His mother is prominent socialite and pioneering jeans designer Gloria Vanderbilt.

7. As a child, he suffered from dyslexia which is a reading disability that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process certain symbols.

8. Cooper made his TV debut at age 3 with his mom on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

9. At the age of nine, he appeared on To Tell the Truth as an impostor.

10. From age 10 to 13, Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Macy's.

11. He waited tables at Mortimer's while growing up.

12. Cooper went to Yale University where he studied Political Science and International Relations.

13. Despite being a journalist today, he has no formal journalistic education.

14. He once worked as an intern for the CIA - how cool is that? "There was a flyer for the CIA in my college career counseling office, and I applied for a summer job. I was a political science major and was interested in serving my country. I know the CIA may sound more exotic and mysterious, but it was actually pretty bureaucratic and mundane, at least the little bit that I saw of it. By the end of the second summer, I realized it was not a place I wanted to work after college," he wrote on his blog.

15. Anderson also studied the Vietnamese language for a year at the University of Hanoi.

16. He is 5' 10" (1.78 m) tall.

17. His brown hair began turning gray when he was 20 and he now refers to the color as "salt-and-pepper."

18. He admits to sometimes thinking of just getting a mohawk.

19. His older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide at age 23 by jumping from the 14th-floor terrace of his mother's New York penthouse apartment. This happened on July 22, 1988.

20. Anderson cites Carter's suicide for sparking his interest in journalism. "Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it's something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can't tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?"

21. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book A Mother's Story, in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma prescription drug salbutamol.

22. Cooper was educated at the Dalton School, a co-educational independent school in New York City.

23. At age 17, after graduating from the Dalton School a semester early, Cooper travelled around Africa for several months on a "survival trip". He contracted malaria on the trip and was hospitalized in Kenya.

24. He then worked as a fact checker for the news agency Channel One, and periodically sold his home-made news segments to the channel.

25. Cooper entered Myanmar with a forged press pass and met with students fighting the Burmese government; he eventually sold his homemade segments to Channel One, a youth-oriented news program.

26. Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News in 1995 then co-anchor on ABC's World News Now program on September 21, 1999.

27. In 2000 Cooper decided he needed a change from the hectic news schedule and became host of The Mole for two seasons before returning to broadcasting.

28. In 2001, Cooper joined CNN, anchoring alongside Paula Zahn on American Morning. In 2002 he became CNN's weekend prime-time anchor. His own show, Anderson Cooper 360, began in 2003.

29. Cooper covered a number of important stories in 2005, including the tsunami damage in Sri Lanka; the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon; the death of Pope John Paul II; and the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

30. In May 2006, Cooper published a memoir for HarperCollins, Dispatches from the Edge, detailing his life and work in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana over the previous year. Some of the book's proceeds are donated to charity.

31. Cooper was also a fill-in co-host for Regis Philbin for the TV talk show Live with Regis and Kelly in 2007 when Philbin underwent triple-bypass heart surgery.

32. In early 2007 Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN, which would allow him to continue as a contributor to 60 Minutes as well as doubling his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million.

33. Cooper appeared on broadway! Well, sort of. He was the narrator for the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, directed by Rob Ashford and starring Daniel Radcliffe.

34. He was Number 3 on Playgirl magazine's Sexiest Newscasters List in 2004. In second place was Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity and in first place was MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

35. Cooper is openly gay and has been in a relationship with gay bar owner Benjamin Maisani since 2009. "The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud."

36. He was ranked #2 among "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America" by Out Magazine in May 2007. After years of speculation, Cooper publicly admitted his homosexuality via a July 2012 email to Andrew Sullivan.

37. In October 2007 Cooper began hosting the documentary Planet in Peril, with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN. In 2008 he, Gupta, and Lisa Ling from National Geographic Explorer teamed up for a sequel, "Planet in Peril: Battle Lines," which premiered in December 2008.

38. He landed his own nationally syndicated talk show called Anderson Live which premiered on September 12, 2011. On October 29, 2012, it was announced that Anderson Live would end at the conclusion of its second season. The show, slightly renamed after season one and revamped with a variety of co-hosts, failed to achieve the ratings distributor Warner Brothers hoped for. The final Anderson Live aired on May 20, 2013.

39. Anderson Cooper's net worth is $100 million.

40. He writes a monthly column for Details magazine.

41. Anderson is a huge fan of the New York-based pop band Scissor Sisters.

42. In his autobiography "Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival" he recalls that as a small boy, his mother showed him the statue of his great-great-great-grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt at Grand Central Station. For several years after, he believed that when one's older relatives died, they turned into statues. Cornelius Vanderbilt made part of his vast fortune in the railroad business, which is why his statue stands at Grand Central.