Anderson Cooper on his famous mom: ‘You may know her name, but you really don’t know who she is, or what her story is’

Anderson Cooper has always been close to his mother but the CNN anchor did not realize how much he is like Gloria Vanderbilt until he began work on an HBO documentary about her.

‘You may know her name, but you really don’t know who she is, or what her story is,’ Cooper said Thursday. ‘I’m a different person than I was when I started this film, and I realize how much like my mother I am.’

That film is Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper. It’s a documentary about the famous heiress and fashion icon that premieres at the Sundance Film Festival later this month and will air on HBO in April.

Cooper has also collaborated with his 92-year-old mother on a memoir.

Mother and so appeared together this week at the TV Critics Association’s Winter Press Tour with Vanderbilt in person in Pasadena and Cooper in New York where he was about to host a town hall meeting with President Barack Obama on gun violence.

In doing research, Cooper learned things about his mom that he did not know previously including that she had once dated Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn.

‘She’s had a more interesting life than me!’ he said. ‘She does have this incredibly optimistic way of looking at things, and she really does believe that the next great love is just around the corner.’