Before Bradley Cooper was a two-time Oscar-nominated actor and one of the most in-demand leading men in Hollywood, he was the fourth lead in a TV show and he had a quickie marriage and quickie divorce to Jennifer Esposito from December 2006 to May 2007. Both Bradley and Jennifer have always remained pretty quiet about what went down between them, but there were always stories/rumors/gossip. I remember hearing stuff about Jennifer finding him in bed with another person (sometimes a guy, sometimes a lady). I remember rumors of violence too. And of course, there are rumors of bearding. But that happens with nearly everyone.

Anyway, Jennifer is sort of down on her luck as an actress these days. So she decided to write a tell-all memoir, but I guess she’s afraid of being sued, so she doesn’t name Bradley Cooper explicitly. So we just have to use the context clues to figure this out.

Jennifer Esposito is trashing ex-husband Bradley Cooper in her new book, a source tells Confidenti@l. While the “American Hustle” star isn’t named, anyone who checks the film website IMDB can safely assume he’s the guy she unceremoniously slams in her memoir, “Jennifer’s Way.” The 41-year-old “Blue Bloods” actress mainly chronicles her lifelong struggle with celiac disease, which included losing teeth on set, having panic attacks, horrific stomach cramps and unsightly rashes.

But about a third of the way through the book, Esposito describes meeting a man who asks her out, and even though there were “an entire marching band squad of red flags,” she chose to ignore them because she didn’t think the relationship would progress. She describes the mystery suitor as, “funny, smart, cocky, arrogant and a master manipulator,” adding that she didn’t “necessarily find him that attractive.” They quickly became a couple, although the actress says her boyfriend had a “mean, cold side” and “his personality could flip on a dime.”

Esposito claims the relationship was an unhealthy one, focused primarily on his needs and nothing else and that she was “a nonissue.” Esposito also writes that she felt “sidelined” from her own health and needs.

“I became very sad and I felt very alone,” Esposito adds, but she stayed in the relationship just the same. The union came to an impasse when Esposito attended a seminar at the Agape International Spiritual Center in L.A. “Within days, my relationship hit an all-time low, and within a week it was over,” she wrote. “Abruptly, rudely, and with the exact callousness that I’d come to expect from him.”

The very next page, Esposito writes of landing a role on a Christina Applegate sitcom, “Samantha Who,” that was on the air in 2007. Her very brief marriage to Cooper was from late December 2006 until May 2007.

Neither party has had much to say about each other since their divorce. When Howard Stern pressed Cooper about the brevity of the marriage in 2011, Cooper vaguely replied, “It was just something that happened. The good thing, we both realized it. … Sometimes you just realize it. It just wasn’t right.”

Esposito was briefly engaged to Aussie tennis player Mark Philippoussis (who starred in a reality dating show for NBC) and is now happily engaged to Brit model Louis Dowler. The two are partners in Esposito’s bakery on E. 10th St., Jennifer’s Way, which serves a variety of gluten-free breads, cookies and muffins.

[From The NY Daily News]

Yeah. I’ll believe this is about Bradley Cooper. This is how he’s always seemed to me too, which is why I’ve always found it hard to believe him as a leading man. I get the “mean, cold side” vibe from him – which is fine when he was a character actor playing douchebags. But he just doesn’t have the warmth to be, say, a romantic lead. What I don’t really understand is this idea of B-Coop as “a master manipulator.” Like, he’s emotionally manipulative? Or he manipulates his public image? He likes to be in control so he dates really young models? Be more specific, Jennifer!

Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.