Calico Cooper

Calico Cooper (born May 19, 1981) is an American singer, dancer, stage performer, actress, comedian, and choreographer. She is the first-born daughter of shock rock singer Alice Cooper and dancer Sheryl Cooper. She began performing with her father occasionally since 1997 and was hired by him at age 18 for his Brutally Live tour. For the next decade, she toured with, and directed portions of, Alice Cooper's live shows, specializing in violent black comedy routines. In 2011 she left touring to concentrate on her acting career. Since 2012 she has been a vocalist and stage performer for the heavy metal band Beasto Blanco. Her film credits include minor roles in The Curse of El Charro, Rolling (2007), a deleted scene in Halloween (2007), Dakota Skye (2008), Suck (2009), and an uncredited scene in Hall Pass (2011), and co-starring roles in Thirty Proof Coil (2010), 13/13/13 (2013), Welcome to Hell (2018), and the short film Fire Fucking Fire (2024). Her television credits include the character Lila Black in Bloomers (2011–2025) and guest starring as Jane Miller in a 2016 episode of Hawaii Five-0.

Early life Calico Cooper was born on May 19, 1981, to Alice and Sheryl Cooper, who resided at Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. A year after her birth, the Coopers moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona. In the early 1980s, Alice's continued substance abuse was putting a severe strain on his relationship with Sheryl, a strain which was exacerbated by the birth of Calico. Alice finally committed to sobriety that year, and Sheryl reconciled with him months later in 1984. Sheryl, a professional dancer, enrolled Calico in dance at age 3. The Coopers felt it was important for their children to attend public school, and Calico's schooling included Hopi Elementary and Arcadia High School. While attending Arcadia High, she belonged to a dance company and professionally performed and competed at the national level in classical ballet, jazz, acrobatics, and tap. After graduating high school, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. However, she then found work performing in her father's stage shows. At age 18, she was hired by Alice to perform multiple roles in and provide choreography and design costumes for his Brutal Planet tour. The most known character she portrayed in the tour was the dominatrix "bullwhip girl", for which she was instructed by Sheryl, who had previously portrayed the character. With the latter character, Calico at first continued Sheryl's role—an "ingenue" or "1940s actress" that the audience would want to protect—but after a few years transformed the nurse into a character, "Nurse Rozetta", that the audience would hate and whose defeat would make Alice almost a hero. Cooper said "I really caught my confidence. All of a sudden, instead of the nurse just being sexy or provocative, I was like, "What if I made you hate her more than you hate Alice? I bet I could do that.'" During one show that year, at the Aerial Theater in Houston, Texas, Calico received a minor ankle laceration. Garric and other members of the band would occasionally play at bar shows when not on tour and sometimes would invite Calico to sing, presaging her joining his band Beasto Blanco in 2012. During the bit, Alice would wear a shirt reading "Britney Wants Me" on the front and "Dead" on the back. The Hilton character would come on during Alice's performance of "I Wish I Were Born in Beverley Hills". Calico in 2010 said that she felt that Spears and Hilton, whom she knows personally, understood the humor, and that one concert where she performed the Hilton bit, Hilton was in the audience.

Cooper credits her stage shows with her father with establishing her in niche in stingingly provocative comedy. Her character would fall stairs and take pies to the face. She said in 2011 that since childhood she always tried to make people laugh, and "For all the years that I toured with my dad, the harder I could fall on my face, or the bigger reaction I could get, it didn't matter what language you spoke it was funny." The members of the show also liked to pull pranks, such as duct taping the guitarist of the opening act and throwing him out of the venue, hiding Calico's skirt so she had to come on stage in her underwear, or one time, the final show of Alice Cooper touring with Scorpions, when Alice and her conspired to have the male members of his band dress in lingerie and replace the dancing girls on the Scorpions' set.

Cooper (center) performing as part of the Alice Cooper band (without Alice) on March 8, 2018, at Rascals Live, in Moline, Illinois. In 2011, she stepped down from regularly touring with Alice to pursue her acting career. In 2017, Calico performed as the nurse character, getting roughed up during "Only Women Bleed" but coming back to torment Alice while he was straitjacketed singing "The Ballad of Dwight Fry".

Acting and comedy career In the mid-2000s, when not on tour with Alice Cooper, Calico acted in several independent films, mostly horror, including The Curse of El Charro, JunkfoodHorrorfest (2007), where she portrayed a "junkie serial killer", and Rolling (2007), where she portrayed a character using MDMA at a rave. A role in a deleted scene in the 2007 Halloween remake earned her Screen Actors Guild card. She played a lead role in The Visitor, which was in pre-production in 2008. a barmaid in the horror film Suck (2009), and co-starred as the "Woman" character in Thirty Proof Coil (2010). Her first starring role in a film was in the 2010 horror film Thirty Proof Coil. She claims that she landed many horror movie roles due to her shows with Alice. In 2011, she landed a starring role in the TV series Bloomers (2011–2018) as the recurring character Lila Black and made an uncredited cameo in Hall Pass (2011). portraying Susan, a murderous pedophilic mother. In 2016 she made an appearance on The Mindy Project. and producing the crime-comedy film Love of Mass Destruction, which she co-starred in, the short film The Taxi Man, and the single-episode TV series The Normal Ones, a show she also wrote and co-starred in. In the 2024 short film Fire Fucking Fire, which debuted at Tribeca Festival in June, Cooper co-starred as the rock star love interest Meg opposite Ally (Rachel Paulson).

With Beasto Blanco In 2012, bassist Chuck Garric formed a band with Chris "Brother" Latham, Beasto Blanco, and Garric invited Cooper to perform backing vocals on some songs on their first album, Live Fast Die Loud (2013). Calico said that when she focused her career on film and television work, she missed performing live, and joining Beasto Blanco allowed her spontaneity and opportunities to push boundaries. According to Cooper, "some tours she's meaner, some sexier, some downright ridiculous." She recounts that one time a kid came up to her after a show and said she looked like Sindel from Mortal Kombat. "I told him he had a good eye, but if he told anyone my secret, I'd finish him. He got the joke, Thank God." A reviewer of a concert by the band in 2022 compared the aesthetic of the group to Mad Max: Fury Road with the stagecraft of Alice Cooper.

Over the course of subsequent releases, Cooper's vocals contribution progressively increased. She shared lead vocals on a cover of her father's single "Feed My Frankenstein" on the band's second, self-titled recording, and Garric splits vocal duty evenly with Cooper on their latest recording, We Are (2019).

Influences Cooper grew up hearing a variety of music. She states that her parents played a lot of classic artists such as Laura Nyro and Burt Bacharach, contemporary acts such as Zodiac Mindwarp and Guns 'N Roses, as well as Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Cooper describes her brand of comedy as physical slapstick. a non-profit founded by Alice and Sheryl Cooper and Chuck Savale. She helped set up a black box theatre for the center. She also has done modeling work.

Discography

Filmography