Brad Pitt
William Bradley Pitt is an American actor and film producer. In a film career spanning more than thirty years, Pitt has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards and one Volpi Cup. His films as a leading actor have grossed over $7.5billion worldwide.
Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the Ridley Scott road film Thelma & Louise. Pitt emerged as a star taking on starring roles in films such as the drama A River Runs Through It, the western Legends of the Fall, the horror film Interview with the Vampire, the crime thriller Seven, the cult film Fight Club, and the crime comedy Snatch. He cemented his leading man status by starring in blockbusters such as Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's film trilogy, Troy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, World War Z, Bullet Train and F1.
Pitt earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in the science fiction drama 12 Monkeys, the fantasy romance The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the sports drama Moneyball. For his portrayal of a stuntman in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also starred in acclaimed films such as Babel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Burn After Reading, Inglourious Basterds, The Tree of Life, Fury, The Big Short, Ad Astra and Babylon.
In 2001, Pitt co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment. As a producer, he won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave and was nominated for Moneyball and The Big Short. An influential figure in popular culture, Pitt appeared on Forbes annual Celebrity 100 list from 2006 to 2008, and the Time 100 list in 2007. Regarded as a sex symbol, Pitt was named People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1995 and 2000. Pitt's relationships have also been subject to widespread media attention, particularly his marriages to actresses Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie, the latter of whom he shares six children with.
Early life
William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to William Alvin Pitt, the proprietor of a trucking company, and Jane Etta, a school counselor. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he lived together with his younger siblings, Doug Pitt and Julie Neal . Born into a conservative Christian household, he was raised as Southern Baptist and later "oscillate between agnosticism and atheism". He later reconciled his belief in spirituality. Pitt has described Springfield as "Mark Twain country, Jesse James country", having grown up with "a lot of hills, a lot of lakes".Pitt attended Kickapoo High School, where he was a member of the golf, swimming, and tennis teams. He participated in the school's Key and Forensics clubs, in school debates, and in musicals. Following his graduation from high school, Pitt enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1982, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. As graduation approached, Pitt did not feel ready to settle down. He loved films—"a portal into different worlds for me"—and, since films were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Two weeks short of completing the coursework for a degree, Pitt left the university and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting lessons and worked odd jobs. He has named Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke as his early acting heroes.
Career
Early work (1987–1993)
While struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from acting coach Roy London. His acting career began in 1987, with uncredited parts in the films No Way Out, No Man's Land and Less than Zero. In May 1987, he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World. In November of the same year, Pitt had a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains. He appeared in four episodes of the CBS primetime series Dallas between December 1987 and February 1988 as Randy, the boyfriend of Jenna Wade's daughter Charlotte. Later in 1988, Pitt made a guest appearance on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street. In the same year, the Yugoslavian–American co-production The Dark Side of the Sun was his first leading film role, starring as a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The film was shelved at the outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence, and was not released until 1997. Pitt made two motion picture appearances in 1989: the first in a supporting role in the comedy Happy Together; the second a featured role in the horror film Cutting Class, the first of Pitt's films to reach theaters. He made guest appearances on television series Head of the Class, Freddy's Nightmares, Thirtysomething, and Growing Pains.Pitt was cast as Billy Canton, a drug addict who takes advantage of a young runaway in the 1990 NBC television movie Too Young to Die?, the story of an abused teenager sentenced to death for a murder. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Pitt is a magnificent slimeball as her hoody boyfriend; looking and sounding like a malevolent John Cougar Mellencamp, he's really scary." The same year, Pitt co-starred in six episodes of the short-lived Fox drama Glory Days and took a supporting role in the HBO television film The Image. His next appearance came in the 1991 film Across the Tracks; Pitt portrayed Joe Maloney, a high school runner with a criminal brother, played by Ricky Schroder. The same year he featured in a Levi's jeans TV commercial based around the song "20th Century Boy" which played in the background.
After years of supporting roles in film and frequent television guest appearances, Pitt attracted wider recognition in his supporting role in Ridley Scott's 1991 road film Thelma & Louise. He played J.D., a small-time criminal who befriends Thelma. His love scene with Davis has been cited as the event that defined Pitt as a sex symbol. After Thelma & Louise, Pitt starred in the 1991 film Johnny Suede, a low-budget picture about an aspiring rock star, and the 1992 live-action/animated fantasy film Cool World, although neither furthered his career, having poor reviews and box office performance.
Pitt took on the role of Paul Maclean in the 1992 biographical film A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford. His portrayal of the character was described by Peoples Janet Mock as a career-making performance, proving that Pitt could be more than a "cowboy-hatted hunk." He has admitted to feeling under pressure when making the film and thought it was one of his "weakest performances ... It's so weird that it ended up being the one that I got the most attention for." Pitt believed that he benefited from working with such a talented cast and crew. He compared working with Redford to playing tennis with a superior player, saying "when you play with somebody better than you, your game gets better." In 1993, Pitt reunited with Juliette Lewis for the road film Kalifornia. He played Early Grayce, a serial killer and the abusive husband of Lewis' character, in a performance described by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone as "outstanding, all boyish charm and then a snort that exudes pure menace." Pitt also garnered attention for a brief appearance in the cult hit True Romance as a stoner named Floyd, providing comic relief to the action film. He capped the year by winning a ShoWest Award for Male Star of Tomorrow.
Breakthrough (1994–1998)
In 1994, Pitt portrayed the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the horror film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel of the same name. He was part of an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. Despite his winning two MTV Movie Awards at the 1995 ceremony, his performance was poorly received. According to the Dallas Observer, "Brad Pitt is a large part of the problem . When directors play up his cocky, hunkish, folksy side he's a joy to watch. But there's nothing about him that suggests inner torment or even self-awareness, which makes him a boring Louis."Following the release of Interview with the Vampire, Pitt starred in Legends of the Fall, based on a novel by the same name by Jim Harrison, set in the American West during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Portraying Tristan Ludlow, son of Colonel William Ludlow a Cornish immigrant, Pitt received his first Golden Globe Award nomination, in the Best Actor category. Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas co-starred as Tristan's brothers. Although the film's reception was mixed, many film critics praised Pitt's performance. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "Pitt's diffident mix of acting and attitude works to such heartthrob perfection it's a shame the film's superficiality gets in his way." The Deseret News predicted that Legends of the Fall would solidify Pitt's reputation as a lead actor.
In 1995, Pitt starred alongside Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey in the crime thriller Seven, playing a detective on the trail of a serial killer who preys on people he considers guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pitt called it a great movie and declared the part would expand his acting horizons. He expressed his intent to move on from "this 'pretty boy' thing and play someone with flaws." His performance was critically well received, with Variety saying that it was screen acting at its best, further remarking on Pitt's ability to turn in a "determined, energetic, creditable job" as the detective. Seven earned $327 million at the international box office. Following the success of Seven, Pitt played psychotic anarchist Jeffrey Goines in Terry Gilliam's 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys. The movie received predominantly positive reviews, with Pitt praised in particular. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called Twelve Monkeys "fierce and disturbing" and remarked on Pitt's "startlingly frenzied performance", concluding that he "electrifies Jeffrey with a weird magnetism that becomes important later in the film." He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film and received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
The following year, he appeared in the legal drama Sleepers, based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name. The film received mixed reviews. In the 1997 film The Devil's Own Pitt starred, opposite Harrison Ford, as Irish Republican Army terrorist Rory Devany, a role for which he was required to learn an Irish accent. Critical opinion was divided on his accent; "Pitt finds the right tone of moral ambiguity, but at times his Irish brogue is too convincing – it's hard to understand what he's saying", wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. ''The Charleston Gazette opined that it had favored Pitt's accent over the movie. The Devil's Own grossed $140 million worldwide.
Later that year, he led as Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in the Jean-Jacques Annaud film Seven Years in Tibet. Pitt trained for months for the role, which demanded significant mountain climbing and trekking practice, including rock climbing in California and the European Alps with his co-star David Thewlis. Pitt had the lead role in 1998's fantasy romance film Meet Joe Black. He portrayed a personification of death inhabiting the body of a young man to learn what it is like to be human. The film received mixed reviews, and many were critical of Pitt's performance. According to Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle'', Pitt was unable to "make an audience believe that he knows all the mysteries of death and eternity." Roger Ebert remarked, "Pitt is a fine actor, but this performance is a miscalculation."