His breakthrough role was as Sheriff July Johnson in the acclaimed Western television miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989).

He has appeared in several major Hollywood films including A Time to Kill (1996), October Sky (1999), American Beauty (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), Seabiscuit (2003), Capote (2005), Syriana (2005), The Kingdom (2007), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), The Town (2010), The Muppets (2011), Live by Night (2016), Cars 3 (2017), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), and Little Women (2019).

[4][9] Cooper attended the University of Missouri and enrolled in the theater program, originally majoring in set design.

[4][5][8] Prior to his film debut with Matewan (1987), Cooper spent the previous 12 years doing stage work with the Actors Theater of Louisville and the Seattle Repertory.

[10] Cooper's early performances include John Sayles' 1987 film Matewan; the 1989 CBS-TV Western miniseries Lonesome Dove; the 1991 indie Western drama Thousand Pieces of Gold, and the 1992 ABC-TV docudrama Bed of Lies, opposite Susan Dey.

Some of his more notable later performances include: Money Train, as a psychotic pyromaniac who terrifies toll booth operators; Lone Star, in a leading role as a Texas sheriff charged with solving a decades-old case; as Deputy Dwayne Looney in director Joel Schumacher's 1996 film A Time to Kill (based on the John Grisham novel); as Frank Booker in 1998's The Horse Whisperer; and as a closeted homophobic Marine Corps colonel in American Beauty, a role that garnered him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Cooper received another Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his supporting role as racehorse trainer Tom Smith in 2003's Seabiscuit.

In 2004, Cooper starred in Silver City, playing an inept Republican gubernatorial candidate, a character noted for similarities to U.S. President George W.

[citation needed] Cooper appeared in three acclaimed films in 2005: Jarhead (which reunited him with American Beauty director Sam Mendes and October Sky actor Jake Gyllenhaal); Capote; and Syriana.

In 2007, he appeared as a government agent in dangerous territory in the action thriller The Kingdom and voiced the character Douglas in the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are (2009).

[12] In 2011, Chris Cooper appeared in The Muppets as Tex Richman, the antagonistic oil tycoon who is unable to laugh.

[13] In 2013, he played Charles Aiken, Sr. in August: Osage County alongside an all-star cast that included Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.

He appeared in an uncredited role in Ben Affleck's crime drama Live by Night, which was released in December 2016.

In 2019, Cooper starred in two acclaimed films, Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, with Tom Hanks,[15] and Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women with an ensemble cast featuring Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern, and Meryl Streep.

[16] In 2024, Cooper served as an executive producer of the documentary My Own Normal about Alexander Freeman, a filmmaker from Newton, Massachusetts who has cerebral palsy, following his journey of becoming a partner and father and confronting the pain of his parent's reaction.

[22] Cooper has said that the death of his son has somewhat helped him understand several characters he played, such as Charles Aiken in August: Osage County (2013)[23] and Phil Eastwood in Demolition (2015).