He made his first appearance on the stage in Brentford at the age of twenty as Dumont in Nicholas Rowe's Jane Shore.

His first London appearance was at the Haymarket Theatre in 1778; he played in benefit performances of Thomas Otway's The Orphan, Charles Johnson's The Country Lasses, and David Garrick and George Colman's The Clandestine Marriage.

After an initial concentration on romantic leads, particularly in comedy, he gradually found his metier playing rakes and villains.

That year he also played Shylock (The Merchant of Venice), Iago (Othello), Macbeth, Kitely (Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour), and Giles Overreach, and became the rival of Kemble, with whom, however, and with Mrs. Siddons, he acted from 1803.

In 1802 he added roles in Edward Moore's The Gamester and Charles Macklin's Man of the World and played Orsino in Alfonso, King of Castile by Matthew Lewis.

Shortly later they acted in John Home's Douglas: Cooke played Glenalvon to Kemble's Old Norval, and Siddons was Lady Randolph.

Washington Irving records seeing the group in Othello (Cooke was Iago, and Charles Kemble was Cassio); he called the performance delightful.

In the last years of the decade, he managed to curb his excesses to some extent; he was, for instance, frequently on stage during the Old Price riots.

Escorted by William Dunlap, he remained sober and performed in Boston, where he played opposite English tragedienne Mary Ann Duff,[1] Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence.

A monument to his memory was erected in St. Paul's chapel (on Fulton Street) by Edmund Kean during his first American tour in 1821.

[2] Barry Cornwall claimed that Kean brought Cooke's big toe back to England, where his disgusted wife subsequently threw it away.

His stage presence was generally described as commanding, although many observers noted that his voice tended to become hoarse in the later acts of challenging plays.

He was, like Garrick, a restless, physically dynamic performer; critics also noted his skill in using his eyes to convey complex thoughts or emotions, and his ability to project stage-whispers even in a large venue.

Of Cooke's famous style of declamation (like Macklin, he delivered soliloquies as if thinking aloud), Hunt complained that it merely turned Shakespeare's poetry into indignant prose.

Where Kemble had simply brushed the bad news aside, Cooke pondered the verse carefully before rejecting it without force.

Wishing to impress well-born visitors with his mimetic talent, Cooke made a number of faces meant to represent various emotions.