Brad Pitt, whose given name is William Bradley Pitt, is a famous American actor. He was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma. After receiving recognition for his performance in Thelma & Louise (1991), Pitt continued to demonstrate his star power in films like A River Runs Through It (1992) and Legends of the Fall (1994). However, he managed to escape being labelled a leading man type by taking on unconventional parts in 12 Monkeys (1995) and Fight Club (1999). Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) earned Pitt an Oscar for Best Actor.

Early Life and Background

Pitt was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, and he attended the University of Missouri from 1983 to 1987. However, he left school before completing his degree in order to pursue an acting career in California. Pitt rose to fame as a charming villain in the film Thelma & Louise, after having played little parts in television and films. He then directed films like 1994’s Legends of the Fall and the 1992’s A River Runs Through It. After that, Pitt won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his roles as a police officer in the gritty thriller Se7en (1995) and as a crazed malcontent in the fantasy 12 Monkeys (1995).

Movies released in the 2000s and later

In his films Seven Years in Tibet (1997), The Devil’s Own (1997), Meet Joe Black (1998), and Fight Club (1999), Pitt acted against type, portraying characters such as an Austrian mountain climber named Heinrich Harrer, a modern-day incarnation of death, and an underground fighter. Jennifer Aniston, an actress, married Pitt in the year 2000. He had a leading role in Ocean’s Eleven, a comedic caper about con artists, the following year. The movie did so well that it spawned two further instalments, 2004’s Ocean’s Twelve and 2007’s Ocean’s Thirteen. The 2004 film Troy featured Pitt as the Greek hero Achilles.

Pitt began dating Angelina Jolie after they co-starred in the action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Pitt has continued to contribute his talents to a broad variety of films, from the culturally diverse Babel (2006) to the historically accurate The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). In 2008, Pitt showed once again how versatile he is by playing two very different characters: a dim-witted would-be blackmailer in the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading and a man who ages backward in the touching fantasy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. His multifaceted performance in the later picture was nominated for an Oscar.

Photo: Reuters

World War II film Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, follows a unit of Jewish American troops who are taught to assassinate Nazis in occupied France. Pitt voiced the antagonist’s heroic opponent in the animated feature Megamind the following year. He portrayed a strict father in 1950s Texas in Terrence Malick’s impressionistic drama The Tree of Life (2011). Later, for the baseball drama Moneyball (2011), Pitt received another best actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of real-life general manager Billy Beane. The video details how Beane used analytics to recruit cheaper, lesser-known players to build winning teams for the Oakland Athletics. In the years that followed, Pitt acted in the criminal drama Killing Them Softly (2012) and the zombie apocalypse thriller World War Z (2013), in which he played a former United Nations investigator trying to stop the spread of the zombie apocalypse.

Both 12 Years a Slave (2013) (about a free black man who is abducted and sold into slavery in the mid-19th century) and The Counselor (2013) (a criminal drama) featured Pitt in minor parts. He portrayed a sergeant in the American army in the last days of World War II in the film Fury (2014). By the Sea, a marital drama that Jolie not only wrote and directed the next year, reunited Pitt and Jolie. Then, in the black comedy The Big Short (2015), he played a former investment banker with good morals who predicted the 2008 financial collapse. Pitt played a Canadian intelligence officer in the 2016 film Allied, whose wife (played by Marion Cotillard) may be a German spy during World War II. In the 2017 Netflix military parody War Machine, he played a four-star general.

When Pitt played the stunt double of a washed-up actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019), the two reunited for a third time. Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his supporting role. In the 2019 sci-fi drama Ad Astra, he portrays an astronaut looking for his lost father (Tommy Lee Jones). The Lost City, an action-romance in which Pitt had a noteworthy appearance, and Bullet Train, a film about assassins on a high-speed train, are both from 2022 and include Pitt in some capacity. He also acted in Babylon, a 1920s Hollywood drama directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Margot Robbie, that same year.

Pitt also had his own film production firm, Plan B Entertainment, in addition to his acting career. When 12 Years a Slave was selected best picture, the firm collaborated with numerous others to make it, and Brad Pitt took home an Oscar for his producing efforts.

Lifestyle and Social Contributions

Photo: Reuters

Tabloids paid close attention to Pitt and Jolie’s relationship after his 2005 divorce from Jennifer Aniston. Both Maddox and Zahara were adopted by Jolie from Cambodia and Ethiopia, and Pitt took them in as his own in 2006. In May of 2006, the couple had their first child together, a daughter named Shiloh. They started their family in 2007 with the adoption of a Vietnamese boy named Pax, then in 2008 they welcomed twins named Knox and Vivienne. Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt two years after their 2014 wedding.

The pair frequently took use of their high profile to advocate for various social concerns. Pitt co-founded and participated heavily in the Not on Our Watch movement, which helped impoverished regions like the Darfur region of Sudan. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, he set up the Make It Right Foundation to help those who had lost their homes. Many prominent architects expressed interest in the project, but building delays and other problems led to multiple lawsuits. Several completed homes started deteriorating in 2015, prompting the foundation to sue the wood supplier; the case was resolved out of court. A class action lawsuit was brought against the foundation by homeowners three years later, citing subpar workmanship; in 2022, Make It Right settled the case for $20.5 million.

Pitt’s other passion was sculpture, which he displayed in a museum in Finland in 2022. A little home made from tree bark and tape was among his “brutally honest” creations.

Trivia and Fun Facts:

Pitt volunteered to chip his teeth before “Fight Club.”

Pitt played Tyler Durden in 1999. 

“Brad’s willing to go to great lengths for a character,” Pitt’s publicist Cindy Guagenti told Entertainment Weekly in 1998. “Most people hate going to the dentist.”

He corrected his teeth after filming. 

He likes to produce more than acting.

“I’d rather be behind the camera,” Pitt told Guy Ritchie in 2012 for Interview magazine. As a producer, you’re part of the team that tells the tale. You or a group championed it, therefore it’s there. Like that.”

Pitt and Jennifer Aniston established Plan B Entertainment in November 2001. The firm produced the actor’s films “The Departed,” “Moneyball,” “World War Z,” and “12 Years a Slave,” which won an Oscar in 2014.

He left college two credits short of a journalism degree to perform.

Pitt quit Missouri at 22. 

“It just came to the time of graduation and everyone—all my friends—were committing to jobs—and I just realised I was not ready for that yet,” he told NPR in 2011.

“I always liked film as a teaching tool—a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me,” he told Esquire in 2013. “It wasn’t a professional possibility where I grew up. Two weeks before graduation, I realised: If the opportunity isn’t here, I’ll go. So easy. I never considered it.”

Photo: Kevork Djansezian

Pitt admits he eats onscreen to keep active.

“I like to keep myself busy, I’m a grazer by nature,” Pitt told JOE in 2019. 

Compilation films and lists of Pitt’s on-screen food show that he eats. Pitt said Rusty Ryan’s eating made sense in the “Ocean’s” flicks. 

I thought he could never sit down and eat since he was always moving. “He always had to grab something on the run,” Pitt remarked. 

He stated ex-wife Angelina Jolie “got me into it.”

“She’s definitely more experienced,” he told Rolling Stone in 2008. “Yeah, she’s a badass.”

Pitt said they “have different styles” of flying. 

“I appreciate the details. “She enjoys getting there,” he added.

Pitt stated “strippers changed my life” and launched his acting career.

Pitt worked in a chicken costume at El Pollo Loco and drove strippers for two months before becoming famous. 

“My job was to drive them to bachelor parties and things,” he told Newsweek during an Oscars panel.

Pitt claimed he’d collect money, “play the bad Prince tapes, and catch the girls’ clothes.”

“It was not a wholesome atmosphere,” he claimed. “Truthfully, the novelty wore off quickly and it got very, very depressing.”

Pitt said he joined Roy London’s acting class because one of the women was in it.

“It was a really important time for me, as far as direction,” he continued.

Twizzlers are his fave.

Pitt shared the interesting tidbit on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1998.

He startled Winfrey, who stated she “never met a person who liked Twizzlers.”

He also likes pizza and Frosted Flakes.  

Pitt’s favourite film is “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” which he dubbed “the worst-performing.”

“I can turn out hits over and over and I just my favourite movie is the worst-performing film of anything I’ve done, ‘The Assassination of Jesse James,’” he told GQ in May 2017. “If I think something is worthy, it will be.”

Pitt starred and produced the 2007 film, which grossed $4 million.

Photo: Reuters

Pitt’s best films include “The Departed,” “Troy,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” These films grossed over $100 million.

He loves “Saturday Night Fever”.

“I loved Saturday Night Fever when I was a kid,” he told NPR of the 1977 John Travolta film. “I couldn’t believe people talked that way. I didn’t get it. Snuck in. R-rated flick. It’s special.”

He also likes “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Dr. Strangelove.”

Legacy

Brad Pitt is considering his filmography’s final chapter. The 58-year-old legend revealed as much in a recent cover story for GQ: “I consider myself on my last leg.”

But it doesn’t mean the end credits can roll just yet. But now that he’s at the “last semester or trimester,” he has to question, “What is this section gonna be?” And how do I envision making that?”

Quentin Tarantino has stated of him, “He’s one of the last remaining big-screen movie stars,” in the same breath as Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Steve McQueen. Simply said, these men are of a different species. Trying to put words to it is like trying to put words to starshine; I doubt you can give it justice. While filming Inglourious Basterds, I became aware of the issue. Whenever Brad was in the frame, I forgot that I was seeing through a camera. I imagined I was in a movie. That impression was made just by having him in the frame.              

Pitt has been moving away from that role for a while now. Focusing on his producing firm, Plan B, which has won three Best Picture Oscars in the previous 20 years, he is selectively picking acting ventures like The Lost City (2022) and Bullet Train (out next month).

She Said, starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as reporters who helped bring down Harvey Weinstein, will be released by Plan B later this year. Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, will be Netflix’s first NC-17 original. Women Talking is about Mennonite women in an isolated religious community who grapple with their faith after a series of sexual assaults by Mennonite men. Pitt has remarked about his most recent picture, “It’s as profound a film as anything made this decade.” It appears that here is where he is focusing his attention as he “designs” his last performance.


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