Bradley Cooper encouraging fans to register as bone marrow donors

Actor Bradley Cooper is appealing to members of the public to register as bone marrow donors in a bid to help a cancer-stricken New York student find a match and give him a better chance of survival.

Anthony Daniels is battling Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, for the fourth time and he is desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant.

The 23 year old has yet to find a suitable match among his family and friends and a search of the Delete Blood Cancer database's registered donors has also proved unsuccessful in the past 18 months.

Now Cooper has stepped in to help raise awareness and hopefully find a good transplant match for Daniels, and the new pals appeared together on breakfast show Good Morning America on Wednesday (06May15) to spread the news.

Discussing how he got involved, the American Hustle star explains, "I was approached by (representatives at) Delete Blood Cancer and they said you know, 'There's a guy, he's a young man at Fordham University dealing with blood cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma... Is there anything that you can do? Maybe take a video or do a photograph?' I'm not on any social media so I said, 'Well, can we meet? Let's meet and talk.'"

The pair instantly hit it off and Cooper admits lending his support to the cause is important to him because his own father passed away from cancer in 2011.

Cooper continues, "I was completely ignorant about the process (of registering to become a donor), the fact that he can have a 50 per cent chance of survival if he just finds a donor... My father had non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he died of lung cancer four years ago, and I just thought, 'This is a great platform to raise awareness.'"

Describing Daniels as an "incredible" guy, the actor adds, "I just think about, you know, what someone goes through normally in their life and what he has to deal with on a daily basis and the little bit that I know about it and to have this sort of demeanour and this energy and this love of life is intoxicating, and I want to make sure that he keeps going."

During the interview, Cooper helped Daniels demonstrate how easy it is to register as a bone marrow donor by swabbing the inside of his cheeks using a testing kit from the Delete Blood Cancer organization.