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Biography
He was born William Bradley Pitt on the
18th of December, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and remains a
mid-Westerner to the core. He was raised, alongside brother Doug and
sister Julie, in Springfield, Missouri. His father, Bill, managed a
trucking firm, working six days a week for 36 years - something of which
Brad is very proud. His mother, Jane, was a High School counselor, but
his mind-set was influenced more by his dad. "Where I grew
up," he once said "you deal. You get through it, power through
it, straight up the middle. And you don't complain". It's an
attitude that's served him well as he's battled the improbable pressures
of stardom.
Due to Bill's success, the Pitts never really wanted for anything, and
Brad in particular used this as a springboard to try everything. A
decent fellow, he was brought up as a Baptist, singing in the church
choir. He loved movies, later recalling a fine day spent at an Ape-athon,
watching all five Planet Of The Apes films, back-to-back. At Kickapoo
High School he was involved in everything. He was a member of the golf,
tennis and swimming teams, as well as the Key and Forensics clubs. He
was into debating, school government and school musicals.
Graduating in 1982, he attended the
University of Missouri, majoring in journalism, but also concentrating
on advertising. Indeed, his ambition was to be an art director. He
joined a fraternity, Sigma Chi, but always remained very close to his
family. Fellow students recall him writing letters to his mother and
grandma while in class.
His choice of career was something of a surprise to those around him.
He'd acted in several fraternity shows, but never really revealed a
desire to act professionally. Music seemed to be more his thing. But
then suddenly, with no real experience behind him, he simply went for
it. With two credits still needed before he graduated, in 1986 he
climbed into his Datsun (known as Runaround Sue) and, with just $325 in
his pocket, took off for California. "In my head," he later
said "I was done with college. I was on to the next thing".
The father of a girl he knew had an apartment in California, occupied
only by a housekeeper, and here he stayed for a month, rent free. Having
made a few friends, he then moved into a flat in North Hollywood, along
with eight other guys. They had no furniture, just a TV, a toaster oven
and a stereo system. They all slept on the floor in the front room. It
was basically Bloke Heaven. For money, they'd go down to the Job
Factory, picking up odd jobs here and there.
At one point, he had a bet with a buddy
as to who could score the most humiliating job. Brad won hands down,
dressing up as a giant chicken for El Pollo Loco and hanging out on the
corner of Sunset Boulevard in 100 degree heat. Aside from this, he spent
time selling cigarettes, delivering fridges, and, bizarrely, assisting a
soap opera writer. He even worked driving strippers around in a
limousine.
Pitt took the acting lark deadly seriously. He studied under coach Roy
London, and would continue to do so for six years, from the off
impressing his fellow students with his emotional freedom. And work came
quickly. He appeared in the sit-com Head Of The Class, for a while
dating the show's star Robin Givens, much to the disgruntlement of her
ex-hubbie Mike Tyson. There was also an episode of Growing Pains. But
there were better jobs than this.
He appeared as Chris in the long-running
soap Another World, which has variously featured Anne Heche, Ray Liotta,
Kelsey Grammer and, coincidentally, the co-star of one of Brad's later
hits, Morgan
Freeman. After this, while auditioning for the show Our House, he
was asked to read for another part, and found himself playing Shalane
McCall's boyfriend Charles in Dallas. He dated her for real too, though
she was a mere 16.
There were a few movie roles too. He had
uncredited parts in both Less Than Zero and Charlie Sheen's No Man's
Land. Then came Cutting Class, about a maniac stalking cheerleaders. He
began dating co-star Jill Schoelen, who earlier been seeing Keanu
Reeves. Then came the first starring role, in Dark Side Of The Sun,
where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to
find a remedy for his terrible skin condition. The movie was shot in
Yugoslavia, with Brad being paid $1,523 a week for seven weeks. It was
looking good. Then, with editing nearly complete, civil war broke out
and much of the film was lost in the ensuing chaos. It would be
rediscovered years later, and the film released, but Brad's first shot
at success was gone. Not only that, but Schoelen dumped him. Ah, well.
There was a bit of cop trouble around this time too. According to Inside
Edition, a sheriff's report said Brad, while filming in LA, had strolled
up to Malibu Canyon Highway and dropped his white shorts for A WHOLE
MINUTE. Apparently, he was charged with indecent exposure, but had the
charge reduced to disturbing the peace, with a $450 fine.
It got better, fast. Brad won a part in the TV movie Too Young To Die?,
about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. As white
trash drug-hound pimp Billy Canton, Brad was thoroughly unpleasant,
taking beastly advantage of runaway Juliette Lewis, who he began dating
in real life. "It was quite romantic," he later observed dryly
"shooting her full of drugs and stuff". The pair would be
together for three years, during which period Brad's career took off
big-time.
It was thought, when he appeared in Glory Days, about a group of High
School friends pulled in different directions by their careers, that
he'd become the new Johnny
Depp. Sadly, the show was pulled after six episodes, so he had to
find another way. He did this immediately, with a 15-minute
mega-performance, showing off his fine physique, giving Geena Davis her
first orgasm and then robbing her blind in Ridley Scott's Thelma And
Louise. Brad had in fact been third choice for the role (George
Clooney didn't even get that far). The first choice, William
Baldwin, chose to do Backdraft instead.
Straight away, he fought against the possibility of being typecast as a
mere beefcake. He was very, very groovy as a wannabe rock star,
alongside Catherine Keener and Nick Cave, in Tom DiCillo's Johnny Suede.
Then he took a big risk by competing with animations in Cool World - a
movie that had millions of men questioning their sexuality when they
found they fancied the cartoon version of Kim Basinger. He won both
roles against the wishes of money-men who wanted bigger name actors to
star.
The run of success continued with Robert Redford's dreamy, moving A
River Runs Through It, for which Brad learned to fly-fish by casting off
of Hollywood buildings. Many times, he's said, he caught his hook on the
back of his own head. Once they had to pull it out with pliers. After
the movie, Brad moved into an apartment with his co-star, Buck Simmonds.
Now Brad really began to prove himself.
In True Romance, he was hilarious as Floyd, the bemused dope-head caught
in the middle of dealers and mobsters. Then, in Kalifornia, he was
tremendous as Early Grayce, crossing the States with girlfriend Juliette
Lewis and scaring the bejesus out of everyone in his path. The movie was
far superior to Oliver Stone's similar and far-more-lauded Natural Born
Killers.
Now the roles got bigger. He played Lestat's foil Louis, hating himself
for drinking blood in Interview With The Vampire. Then he sent millions
of women wild as Tristan Ludlow, falling in love with his brother's
girl, becoming an animal in the trenches of WW1 then finding inner truth
back home in Legends Of The Fall. It was said he dated the girl for real
too - Julia Ormond. He certainly broke up with Juliette Lewis and this
was probably for the best, as Lewis had long complained of the pressure
she felt dating such a beautiful man.
Next came a major hit, with David Fincher's bleak but wonderful Seven.
Backed by Morgan
Freeman's stern and studious Detective Somerset, Pitt was great as
new-boy Detective David Mills, sent mad by the taunts of Kevin Spacey.
Oh, and by the fact that Spacey has beheaded his pregnant wife. Always
guaranteed to annoy, that. Seven also saw Brad begin a romance with
co-star Gwyneth Paltrow that made them the most sought-after couple on
the planet. When later accepting a Golden Globe for his role in 12
Monkeys, he'd call her "my angel, the love of my life", and
he'd propose to her while in Argentina filming Seven Years In Tibet.
Paltrow in turn would claim she'd give up
acting to raise Brad's children. Sadly, they'd split in 1997, a few
months into the engagement, a heartbroken Paltrow saying "I think
you have to keep yourself intact in order to have a healthy
relationship, and I didn't". Luckily for Brad, the break-up meant
he wouldn't star with her in the horrible Duets. But he did have to
suffer the indignity of having nude pictures of himself and Gwyneth,
taken ages previously while they holidayed on St Barthelemy in the
French West Indies, being published in Playgirl. He fought to have all
copies withdrawn from the shops, but the damage was done.
After Seven came Terry Gilliam's bizarro
sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys, for which Brad turned down Apollo 13. In it,
he went for broke as a freaked-out denizen of an asylum who's actually
the head of an extremely dangerous gang which destroys civilisation with
a very nasty virus. For his pains he took that Golden Globe (he was also
Oscar nominated). After Sleepers, there was The Devil's Own, where he
mastered a Belfast accent to play a terrorist staying in Harrison
Ford's house. Pitt has said the filming was a nightmare as the
original script was binned but the studio head demanded they make a film
anyway. Walking out would, he was told, cost him $63 million, so he
tried to make the best of it. As you would.
Now he was one the biggest stars in Hollywood, getting paid over $17
million for playing Death in Meet Joe Black. Then he rejoined Fincher
for Fight Club, playing Edward Norton's cool and sexy alter-ego Tyler
Durden and, as he has done in so many movies, causing terrible social
havoc. He also treated Helena Bonham Carter to pleasures similar to
those enjoyed by Geena Davis in Thelma And Louise. Her appreciation was
ear-splitting. For servicing her so expertly, Brad received another $17
million. For Davis it had been just $6,000.
After this, Pitt took a brief step down in budget for Snatch. A wild
caper involving a diamond heist, Russian and American mafia and all
manner of underworld shenanigans, this saw him as a gypsy boxer brought
in as a ringer by two failing promoters (he honed his boxing skills at
Ricky English's gym in Watford). The movie saw him dusting off his
Devil's Own accent and, inspired by his co-star Benicio Del Toro's
recent performance in The Usual Suspects, taking it to the Nth degree.
Hilariously, no one could understand him, not even the other people in
the film. Yet still respect did not come his way, his actorly efforts
being for the most part overshadowed by events in his private life. 2000
would see him rise to an unprecedented level of celebrity when he
married Jennifer
Aniston, star of the huge hit TV comedy Friends.
He followed Snatch with The Mexican which, pairing him with Julia
Roberts, could easily have been a blockbusting coupling of
Hollywood's two most glamorous stars. Instead, it was a freaked-out road
movie, with the glitzy duo spending very little screen time together.
Here Brad was a small time crook who has to pay offf a debt to crime
lord Gene Hackman by travelling to Mexico and picking up a priceless
handgun, causing girlfriend Roberts to leave him and take off for Vegas.
Poor Pitt has a terrible time. Fearful of Hackman, dominated and
confused by Roberts and deceived and mocked by the Mexican locals, he
keeps digging his hole deeper - a situation not helped by his wretched
Spanish, essentially English with an O added at the end of each word.
The critics were disappointed by The
Mexican's failure to play the Pitt-Roberts card. They weren't too keen
on his next outing either, Spy Game. This saw him as the protege of
retiring CIA spymaster Robert Redford - thus bringing together two
generations of actors who had to battle against the effects of their own
looks in order to gain respect. The movie begins with Pitt in a Chinese
prison and Robert
Redford having 24 hours to save him.
During the course of this fraught rescue
mission, we flash back to see how an idealistic Pitt was recruited by
Redford after Vietnam and how falling for a dodgy Catherine McCormack
got him into this mess. It was intriguing stuff, but generally spoiled
by director Tony Scott's insistence on super-snappy editing that did not
allow any character to grow.
Now, in an odd subversion of his leading man status, Brad chose to join
an ensemble cast for Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's 11, an update of the
1960 Rat Pack flick. This saw George
Clooney as Danny Ocean, gathering a team of crack crooks to turn
over a Vegas casino. Brad would play his trusty sidekick Rusty Ryan who,
while casing the joint, notices that casino boss Andy Garcia is going
out with Ocean's former wife (Julia
Roberts, again). Could emotional stuff be getting in the way? Of
course, it does, adding extra enjoyment to one of the slickest and
smartest crime movies of recent times.
After this huge hit, Pitt would not be seen on screen for another three
years, other than cameos for his new buddies Soderbergh and Clooney.
First, alongside a host of stars including Roberts and his fomer Johnny
Suede cohort Catherine Keener, he popped up in Soderbergh's $2 million
budget Full Frontal, a cinematic curio of films within films within
films. Deep in there would be Brad, appearing mostly on mag covers and
playback video, playing a superstar playing a tough cop in a new movie.
Full Frontal would be attacked as a major indulgence on the part of
Soderbergh and his cast, with only Pitt escaping criticism. It was noted
that he was the least actorly and pretentious of them, and more than
willing to send himself up, as was Seven's director David Fincher, who
here fawned over Pitt very amusingly.
The next cameo would see Brad playing it for laughs once more, in
Clooney's Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, written by Charlie Kaufman
and based on the cult memoirs of Chuck Barris, a game show host who
claimed to have also been an assassin for the CIA. Working for free,
Pitt would pop up in a flashback to an episode of TV show The Dating
Game, where hopefuls would choose from three prospective spouses. Brad,
and his Ocean's 11 co-star Matt
Damon, would naturally be turned down in favour of Bachelor Number
3. With Julia
Roberts also putting in an appearance, it was the fourth time in two
years these major stars had graced the same credit listing.
2003 would see Pitt lend his voice to the
titular hero of the animated Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas. But this
was just a prelude to a far more ambitious mythical epic, Wolfgang
Petersen's $220 million Troy. Having consciously avoided starring roles
that played up his looks, now Brad went the whole hog as Achilles, the
elite warrior charged by King Agamemnon to lead the seige of Troy and
win back the stolen wife of his brother Menelaus.
Petersen pulled out the stops in making
Pitt look like a Greek god. Pitt, on the other hand, never keen to pose
when he could be acting, attempted to deepen his character by playing
Achilles as an embittered man with a profound disrespect for authority
and an unhealthy death wish. Even so, it was his titanic battle with
Eric Bana's Hector that really stood out in a movie marked by its
spectacular SFX.
Such was the scope of Troy that Pitt was forced to pull out of Darren
Aronofsky's sci-fi epic The Fountain. Coincidentally, a severe pulling
of his Achilles' tendon also put back the filming of a forthcoming
effort, a return to Soderbergh and Clooney with Ocean's 12, where the
old gang are forced by their original victim Andy Garcia to regroup and
pull off three major European heists.
This would not, though, be the main
reason Pitt was so glaringly in the public eye throughout 2004. Instead,
the tabloids were foaming at the mouth over the possibility that Pitt's
marriage to Jennifer
Aniston was on the rocks. Rumours abounded that on the set of his
next picture, Mr And Mrs Smith, an affair had begun with co-star Angelina
Jolie, rumours that would not cease. And, come January, 2005, Pitt
and Aniston would indeed split (they'd divorce the following October)
with Pitt now being photographed increasingly often in Jolie's company.
The coverage would reach absurd proportions, with one set of sneaked
photos selling for over $500,000.
The scandal would have no effect on Pitt's pulling-power at the
box-office. Mr And Mrs Smith, where he and Jolie played a married couple
who, unbeknown to each other, are both assassins, was hugely stylish and
another big hit. And Pitt's other interests would begin to flower, too.
Ever more involved in architecture, he would join Frank Gehry on a
project in Hove, England. He'd present a BBC Radio 2 documentary on the
tragic folk singer Nick Drake. And Plan B, the production company he'd
set up with Aniston and friend Brad Grey, really took off. With Grey
appointed CEO at Paramount, the company would see success with its
debut, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and have a further dozen
projects on the go.
Onscreen, 2006 would bring two more offerings. First would be Babel,
directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, of Amores Perros and 21 Grams
fame.
This was a series of interconnecting
stories, taking place over 36 hours on three continents, with Pitt and
Cate Blanchett as an American couple on holiday in Morocco, meeting a
shepherd family who tear their social and political world-views apart.
Then he'd take on another heroic historical role, this time appearing as
the titular bandit in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward
Robert Ford, which retold the famous western story through the eyes
Casey Affleck's Ford, who joins the James gang then comes to resent
Jesse's popularity.
Brad Pitt now chooses his parts
carefully, clearly alternating between hero roles in blockbusters and
more "interesting" fare. All he really needs now is for the
diehard critics to finally accept that he's not just a screen stud. As
he's said himself: "One, it's boring. Two, it's stupid. And three,
it's death". Good luck to him - he deserves better.~ Dominic Wills
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