In 'A Star is Born,' Lady Gaga lets go and shows a more real version of herself

She walked downstairs and there he was, staring at her. He stepped toward her, examined her face: concealer, mascara, rouge.

"Take it off," Bradley Cooper told Lady Gaga.

She noticed something in his hand. It was a makeup wipe. With it, he erased the colors from her forehead down to her chin.

This is the woman Cooper wanted in his film, "A Star Is Born." Not the pop star masked with face paint and headdresses and hairpieces. Just Stefani Germanotta. "Completely open," he said. "No artifice."

Until that moment in 2016, during a screen test in her home, Gaga didn't realize how much she wanted the part - one played by Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand before her. And to get it, she was going to have to "completely let go and trust" Cooper. She couldn't be that girl from the Lower East Side who spent hours doing her makeup before her gigs. She had to let the camera zoom in on her face wearing