A Star is Born is an Oscar-winning film. Its leads - Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper - have been hailed for their transformative performances. And its biggest song, Shallow, is still everywhere.

But for legions of commentators on the internet, all those achievements pale in comparison to discussions about Gaga and Cooper themselves.

The pair have been the subject of gossip ever since A Star is Born was released. While most people understand the two were just acting when they played Allie and Jackson, others can’t seem to separate reality from fiction and believe Gaga and Cooper are wildly in love.

That kind of rhetoric only ramped up this week, following the pair’s rendition of Shallow at the Academy Awards. The intimate performance – without an introduction the pair simply got up out of their seats and went directly to a piano on stage – has led to a series of “poor Irina” comments, referring to Cooper’s longtime girlfriend.

It’s frustrating that Gaga and Cooper aren’t allowed to do their jobs, and do them very well, without their personal lives being picked over.

And we’re not the only ones who are incredulous at the endless speculation - Gaga has had enough of it too.

Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the singer and actress rolled her eyes when asked by Kimmel what she thinks of people saying that she and Cooper “must be in love”.

Labelling social media as “the toilet of the internet”, Gaga went on to quash the theories that she and Cooper aren’t acting.

“Yes, people saw love, and guess what?” She said. “That’s what we wanted you to see. This is a love song, Shallow. The movie, A Star is Born, it’s a love story. We worked so hard, we worked all week on that performance.”

Gaga revealed that idea for the minimal staging was all Cooper’s vision, but that both agreed that “from a performance perspective it was so important to us that we were connected the entire time”.

“Look, I’ve had my arms wrapped around Tony Bennett for three years touring the world,” Gaga continued, pretending to consider it when Kimmel asked if she was having an affair with Bennett. 

“When you’re singing love songs, that’s what you want people to feel,” she said. “I’m an artist, guess we did a good job, fooled you.”

The point of acting is to fool us - for those few minutes of Gaga and Cooper’s performance we were supposed to believe that they were Allie and Jackson again. That the actors looked enamoured with each other on stage isn’t evidence of their secret love, it’s an illustration of just how good they are at acting.

And aren’t those talents what we should be talking about instead? 

Image: Getty