Bradley Cooper is a Hollywood A-list star who is best known for appearing in movies like American Sniper and A Star Is Born. What many people don’t know about Cooper, however, is that he’s actually a proud Christian behind the scenes.

Cooper was born and raised in a tight-knit family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though he was recently declared the Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine, Cooper has said that he was not considered good looking growing up.

“I never lived the life of ‘Oh, you’re so good-looking.’ People thought I was a girl when I was little, because I looked like a girl,” Cooper said, “maybe because my mother would keep my hair really long in a bowl cut.”

Cooper has also said that his parents raised him in the church, and that his faith has always been important to him.

“I grew up Roman Catholic. I was baptized,” Bradley said. “I always loved the pageantry of it. A lot of it had to do with loving my father and looking at him wear his tweed blazer to Mass. I loved the way he prayed, so I would pray like he would. Not for any other reason than I wanted to be like my father — I wanted to be like Charlie Cooper. But in so doing, through the ritual of it, I started to have faith in God. Am I a spiritual person today? Yes. I don’t know how I could not be. It’s like saying, ‘Do you breathe?’”