Blockbuster 'American Sniper' blasted over use of fake baby

Bradley Cooper (left) picks up the fake baby from Sienna Miller in 'American Sniper'. (Supplied)

Oscar-nominated blockbuster American Sniper can add another notch to its list of controversies: use of a fake baby during a family scene.
While the film enjoyed a hugely successful opening weekend in the United States, it stirred controversy online after several celebrities tweeted their criticisms.
Now it has emerged a mechanised baby prop was used in a scene featuring actors Bradley Cooper and his onscreen wife Sienna Miller.
The Hollywood Reporter says some audience members openly laughed at a media screening when the fake baby was passed between Cooper and Miller in a scene.
Another scene features the baby prop for just a second but its face is obscured from the camera.
Earlier in the movie real babies appear during a nursery scene but the use of a prop has been blasted by critics.

Bradley Cooper in American Sniper, which has been nominated for an Oscar for best film. (Supplied)

Sunday Times critic Camilla Long wrote that she had "never seen so many terrible fake babies in one film".
"It's so obvious, and neither one of them looks like they are comfortable holding it," Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote after a December screening of the film.
American Sniper is an adaptation of a memoir by Chris Kyle (played by Cooper), who is the deadliest marksman in US military history, with 160 confirmed kills.
The film follows Kyle through his tours of duty in Iraq after the September 11 attacks and shows his struggle with PTSD in his civilian life.
The film has been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, but it has been attacked as polemical and for glorifying the US-led invasion of Iraq.