Brad Pitt

• 1. Introduction

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  Brad Pitt left the University of Missouri two weeks short of completing the coursework for his degree. As graduation approached, he did not feel ready to settle down. He loved films, which he once called "a portal into different worlds for me." Films were not made in Missouri, so he went to Los Angeles, where they were. Born William Bradley Pitt, he became an actor and producer whose films as a leading actor have grossed over 7.5 billion dollars worldwide. How did a student who walked away from a degree become a star recognized around the world? Why did critics spend years doubting an actor the public adored? And what did he build once the roles alone were not enough?

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• 2. Springfield to Los Angeles

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  Shawnee, Oklahoma, is where William Bradley Pitt was born on the 18th of December 1963. His father, William Alvin Pitt, ran a trucking company. His mother, Jane Etta, worked as a school counselor. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where Pitt grew up with a younger brother, Doug, born in 1966, and a younger sister, Julie, born in 1969.

  Pitt later called Springfield "Mark Twain country, Jesse James country," a place with "a lot of hills, a lot of lakes." The household was conservative and Christian, and he was raised Southern Baptist. He attended church regularly as a child. In adulthood he grew critical of organized religion and described his beliefs as evolving. At one point he put himself at "probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic." He describes his spirituality as personal and experiential rather than tied to any organized system.

  At Kickapoo High School he played on the golf, swimming and tennis teams. He also joined the Key and Forensics clubs, took part in school debates and performed in musicals. In 1982 he enrolled at the University of Missouri, studying journalism with a focus on advertising.

  In Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from the acting coach Roy London and worked odd jobs. Gary Oldman, Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke were the actors he named as his early heroes.

  His acting career began in 1987 with uncredited parts in No Way Out, No Man's Land and Less than Zero. In May of that year he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World. Guest spots on the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains followed in November. Between December 1987 and February 1988 he appeared in four episodes of the CBS series Dallas, playing Randy, the boyfriend of Jenna Wade's daughter Charlotte.

  In 1988 he guest starred on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street and appeared in a Pringles commercial directed by Lawrence Bridges. That year also brought his first leading film role, in The Dark Side of the Sun, a Yugoslavian-American co-production. He played a young American whose family takes him to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence shelved the film, and it was not released until 1997.

  Cutting Class, a horror film from 1989, became the first Pitt film to reach theaters. That year he also took a supporting part in the comedy Happy Together. His television guest roles included Head of the Class, Freddy's Nightmares, Thirtysomething and a second visit to Growing Pains.

  In 1990 he played Billy Canton, a drug addict who exploits a young runaway, in the NBC television movie Too Young to Die? Juliette Lewis played the runaway. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called Pitt "a magnificent slimeball." That year he also appeared in six episodes of the Fox drama Glory Days and in the HBO film The Image.

  In 1991 Pitt played Joe Maloney, a high school runner with a criminal brother, in Across the Tracks. He also appeared in a Levi's jeans commercial built around the song "20th Century Boy." Then came Thelma & Louise, directed by Ridley Scott. Pitt played J.D., a small-time criminal who befriends Thelma, played by Geena Davis. His love scene with Davis has been cited as the moment that defined him as a sex symbol.

  Johnny Suede, a low-budget film about an aspiring rock star, followed in 1991. The live-action and animated fantasy Cool World came in 1992. Neither advanced his career, because reviews and box office were poor. His next role would come in a film directed by Robert Redford.

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• 3. Pretty Boy Problem

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  A River Runs Through It, released in 1992 and directed by Robert Redford, gave Pitt the part of Paul Maclean. Janet Mock of People described it as a career-making performance that proved he could be more than a "cowboy-hatted hunk." Pitt felt pressure on set and counted it among his "weakest performances." He found it strange that it drew so much attention. 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 he reunited with Juliette Lewis for the road film Kalifornia. He played Early Grayce, a serial killer and the abusive husband of Lewis's character. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the performance "outstanding, all boyish charm and then a snort that exudes pure menace." Pitt also drew notice for a brief turn as a stoner named Floyd in the cult hit True Romance, which gave that action film some comic relief. He ended the year with a ShoWest Award for Male Star of Tomorrow.

  Interview with the Vampire arrived in 1994, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel. Pitt played the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac alongside Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater and Antonio Banderas. He won two MTV Movie Awards at the 1995 ceremony, yet his performance was poorly received. The Dallas Observer judged that nothing about him suggested inner torment or even self-awareness, which made him a boring Louis.

  Legends of the Fall, also from 1994, was based on a novel by Jim Harrison. It was set in the American West during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Pitt played Tristan Ludlow, son of the Cornish immigrant Colonel William Ludlow, played by Anthony Hopkins. Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas played Tristan's brothers. The role brought Pitt his first Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actor. The film's reception was mixed, but many critics praised him. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that his "diffident mix of acting and attitude works to such heartthrob perfection."

  Seven, in 1995, put Pitt opposite Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey. He played a detective hunting a serial killer who targets people he considers guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pitt said he wanted to move on from "this 'pretty boy' thing" and play someone with flaws. Variety called his work screen acting at its best. The film earned $327 million at the international box office.

  Terry Gilliam's 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys gave Pitt the role of Jeffrey Goines, a psychotic anarchist. Janet Maslin praised his "startlingly frenzied performance." It won him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and his first Academy Award nomination, in the same category.

  The next three years brought mixed results. Sleepers, a 1996 legal drama based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel, received mixed reviews. In the 1997 film The Devil's Own, Pitt played the Irish Republican Army terrorist Rory Devany opposite Harrison Ford and had to learn an Irish accent. The San Francisco Chronicle said the brogue was at times so convincing that it was hard to understand him. The film grossed $140 million worldwide.

  Later in 1997 he played the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in Seven Years in Tibet, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Pitt trained for months, including rock climbing in California and the European Alps with co-star David Thewlis. The film's Buddhist themes fed public discussion of Tibetan Buddhism in Western popular culture. In October 1997 Pitt appeared on the cover of a religion-themed issue of Time magazine. In 2022 he visited a Tokyo Buddhist temple and joined a prayer ritual while promoting his film Bullet Train.

  Meet Joe Black, in 1998, cast him as a personification of death inhabiting a young man's body to learn what being human is like. Reviews were mixed, and many faulted Pitt. Roger Ebert wrote, "Pitt is a fine actor, but this performance is a miscalculation."

  Fight Club, David Fincher's 1999 adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, gave Pitt the role of Tyler Durden. He trained in boxing, taekwondo and grappling. He also agreed to have pieces of his front teeth removed to look the part, and they were restored when filming ended. The film premiered at the 1999 Venice International Film Festival. Critics were divided on the film but widely praised Pitt. Box office was worse than expected, yet Fight Club became a cult classic after its DVD release in 2000.

  Snatch, Guy Ritchie's 2000 gangster film, cast him as an Irish Traveller boxer with a barely intelligible accent. Several reviewers criticized the film, but most praised Pitt. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that before Snatch, Pitt had been "shackled by roles that called for brooding introspection." LaSalle added that Pitt's accent was so thick that even Brits could not understand him.

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• 4. Stardom and Prizes

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  On the 22nd of November 2001, Pitt guest starred in the eighth season of Friends as a man with a grudge against Rachel Green. Jennifer Aniston played Rachel, and she was Pitt's wife at the time. The performance earned him an Emmy nomination.

  Earlier in 2001 he had starred opposite Julia Roberts in The Mexican, which enjoyed box office success. He also played Tom Bishop, an operative of the CIA's Special Activities Division, in the Cold War thriller Spy Game. That film grossed $143 million. In December 2001 came Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack original. Pitt played Rusty Ryan alongside George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy García and Roberts. Critics liked it, and it earned $450 million worldwide.

  In February 2002 Pitt appeared in two episodes of the MTV series Jackass. In one he ran through the streets of Los Angeles in a gorilla suit, and in another he took part in his own staged abduction. That year he also had a cameo in George Clooney's directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. In 2003 he began voice acting, speaking as the title character in the DreamWorks film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. He also played Patch, Boomhauer's brother, in an episode of King of the Hill.

  Troy and Ocean's Twelve both arrived in 2004. For Troy, based on the Iliad, Pitt spent six months sword training to play Achilles. An on-set injury to his Achilles tendon delayed production for several weeks. Ocean's Twelve earned $362 million worldwide. CNN's Paul Clinton called the Pitt and Clooney dynamic "the best male chemistry since Paul Newman and Robert Redford."

  Mr. & Mrs. Smith, directed by Doug Liman in 2005, paired Pitt with Angelina Jolie as a bored married couple who discover that each is an assassin for a competing agency. Reviews were reasonable, but critics singled out the chemistry between the two stars. The film earned $478 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest hits of 2005.

  Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2006 drama, put Pitt opposite Cate Blanchett. It was screened at Cannes and at the Toronto International Film Festival that year. Babel received seven Academy Award nominations and seven Golden Globe nominations, winning the Golden Globe. Pitt earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor and later called taking the part one of the best decisions of his career. Ocean's Thirteen followed in 2007 and, though less lucrative than the first two, earned $311 million internationally.

  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, adapted from Ron Hansen's 1983 novel, premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. Andrew Dominik directed. Pitt played the outlaw Jesse James, and the performance won him the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He collected it a year later, at the 2008 festival. As of January 2019, it was his own favorite among his films.

  Burn After Reading, in 2008, was his first collaboration with the Coen brothers. The Guardian called it a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy and noted that Pitt's performance was among the funniest. That year he also starred in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a loose adaptation of a 1921 story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Pitt's character is born an octogenarian and ages in reverse. The role brought his first Screen Actors Guild nomination, a fourth Golden Globe nomination and a second Academy Award nomination. The film received 13 Oscar nominations and grossed $329 million worldwide.

  Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino, premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Pitt played Lieutenant Aldo Raine, "The Apache," an American resistance fighter battling Nazis in German-occupied France. The film took $311 million worldwide and earned eight Academy Award nominations. In 2010 Pitt voiced the superhero Metro Man in the animated Megamind. In 2011 he played the Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis's 2003 book. Moneyball received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Pitt.

  Killing Them Softly, in 2012, cast him as the mob hitman Jackie Cogan, in a film by Andrew Dominik based on George V. Higgins's novel Cogan's Trade. In 2013 Pitt starred in World War Z, based on Max Brooks's novel. It grossed $540 million worldwide. That year he also had a supporting role in Ridley Scott's The Counselor. Fury, a World War II film written and directed by David Ayer, was released on the 17th of October 2014. Co-stars included Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Michael Peña and Jason Isaacs. It grossed $211 million worldwide.

  In 2015 Pitt starred opposite Jolie in By the Sea, a romantic drama about a marriage in crisis, written and directed by her. It was their first collaboration since Mr. & Mrs. Smith. In 2016 he played an assassin who falls in love with a French spy, played by Marion Cotillard, in Robert Zemeckis's Allied. Throughout 2017 he played a recurring weatherman on The Jim Jefferies Show.

  In 2019 Pitt played the veteran stunt double Cliff Booth opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award for it. It was his second Oscar, but the first he received for acting. That year he also played Roy McBride, a space engineer searching the galaxy for his father, in James Gray's Ad Astra. One description of the performance said it "weaponizes passivity into a lethal form of self-defense." In 2020 he portrayed Dr. Anthony Fauci in a Saturday Night Live cold open and earned a Primetime Emmy nomination.

  In 2022 Pitt starred in David Leitch's Bullet Train. He also reunited with Margot Robbie in Damien Chazelle's Babylon. Wolfs, a comedy-thriller written and directed by Jon Watts, reunited him with George Clooney and was released in September 2024. F1, the 2025 Formula One racing film directed by Joseph Kosinski, paid Pitt $30 million. It became Apple's biggest box office hit and overtook World War Z as the highest-grossing film of his career. Pitt produced F1 as well as starring in it.

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• 5. Producer's Chair

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  Plan B Entertainment began in the early 2000s, when Pitt founded it with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Grey, the CEO of Paramount Pictures. Its first production was Troy. In 2006 the company produced The Departed, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pitt was credited on screen as a producer, but only Graham King was ruled eligible for the Oscar.

  The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's experimental drama with Sean Penn, was produced by Pitt, who also appeared in it. It won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Moneyball earned a Best Picture nomination, and Pitt was among its nominated producers. He also produced World War Z. A sequel was announced in 2016, then briefly delayed, then confirmed with David Fincher as director. It was finally shelved because of budget problems.

  In 2013 Pitt produced 12 Years a Slave, a historical drama based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup, and played a small role. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won three, including Best Picture. That award was Pitt's first Oscar. That same season, Plan B and ABC Studios placed their first television series, the sci-fi and fantasy drama Resurrection, on the 2013-2014 schedule.

  The Big Short, which he produced and co-starred in alongside Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling, followed in 2015. It grossed over $102 million worldwide and earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. That gave Pitt his third Oscar nomination as a producer. In 2017 he produced and starred in the Netflix satirical war comedy War Machine.

  In 2021 Pitt entered the recording business by creating a company with the French record producer Damien Quintard. Their base is Miraval Studios, set in Pitt's Chateau Miraval in the south of France. The studio reopened in 2022 after two decades of inactivity. Before closing, it had recorded Pink Floyd, the Cranberries, AC/DC, Sade and Muse, among others.

  Pitt has also taken up pottery and made sculptures. Nine of his sculptures were shown alongside works by the musician Nick Cave and the artist Thomas Houseago at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland. The exhibition ran in 2022 and 2023.

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• 6. Causes and Houses

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  Frank Gehry's Los Angeles offices are where Pitt studied computer-aided design, taking time away from film to do it. In 2000 he co-authored a book on the Blacker House with the architects Thomas A. Heinz and Randell Makinson. He also narrated e2 design, a PBS series about environmentally friendly building around the world.

  In 2006 he founded the Make It Right Foundation. It organized housing professionals to finance and build 150 sustainable, affordable houses in New Orleans's Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. The project involved 13 architectural firms and the environmental group Global Green USA, and several firms donated their services. Pitt and the philanthropist Steve Bing each committed $5 million. The first six homes were finished in October 2008.

  In March 2009 Pitt met President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promote green housing as a national model and discuss federal funding. In September 2009 the U.S. Green Building Council gave him an award recognizing the project.

  The Jolie-Pitt Foundation was established by Pitt and Angelina Jolie in September 2006. It made initial donations of $1 million each to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders. In October 2006 it gave $100,000 to the Daniel Pearl Foundation, created in memory of the late journalist. According to federal filings, the couple invested $8.5 million in 2006. The foundation gave away $2.4 million that year and $3.4 million in 2007. It gave $1 million to a U.N. refugee agency in June 2009 for Pakistanis displaced by fighting. In January 2010 it gave $1 million to Doctors Without Borders after the Haiti earthquake.

  Other causes came earlier. In 2005 Pitt narrated the PBS series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge. In 2006 he and Jolie visited a Haitian school supported by Yéle Haïti, the charity founded by Wyclef Jean. In May 2007 they donated $1 million to three organizations in Chad and Sudan serving people affected by the Darfur crisis. He supports the One Campaign against AIDS and poverty. With Clooney, Damon, Don Cheadle, David Pressman and Jerry Weintraub, he also founded Not On Our Watch, which focuses global attention on stopping "mass atrocities."

  In October 2004 Pitt returned to the University of Missouri to urge students to vote in the presidential election, in which he supported John Kerry. Later that month he backed public funding for embryonic stem-cell research and endorsed California's Proposition 71. "We have to make sure that we open up these avenues so that our best and our brightest can go find these cures that they believe they will find," he said.

  In an October 2006 interview with Esquire, Pitt said he would marry Jolie when everyone in America could legally marry. In September 2008 he donated $100,000 to the campaign against California's Proposition 8. In March 2012 he played Judge Vaughn Walker in a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned that ban, in Dustin Lance Black's play 8. That September he said, "I am an Obama supporter and I'm backing his U.S. election campaign." In October 2020 he narrated an advertisement for Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

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• 7. Love and Family

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  Gwyneth Paltrow, his Seven co-star, was engaged to Pitt after a much-publicized romance that ran from 1994 to 1997. Before that, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, he was romantically involved with several co-stars. They included Shalane McCall, Robin Givens, Jill Schoelen, Geena Davis and Juliette Lewis. McCall and Lewis were 15 and 17 when Pitt started dating them.

  Pitt met Jennifer Aniston in 1998. They married at a private ceremony in Malibu on the 29th of July 2000. In January 2005 they announced that they had decided to separate. Two months later Aniston filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, and the Los Angeles Superior Court finalized it on the 2nd of October 2005. In a February 2009 interview, Pitt said he and Aniston "check in with each other."

  In April 2005, one month after Aniston filed, paparazzi photographs showed Pitt, Angelina Jolie and her son Maddox on a beach in Kenya. Jolie and Pitt said they fell in love on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith and that there was no infidelity. The entertainment media dubbed the couple "Brangelina," and shirts reading "Team Jolie" and "Team Aniston" became a fashion trend. On the 11th of January 2006, Jolie confirmed to People that she was pregnant with Pitt's child. That was the first time she publicly acknowledged the relationship.

  The couple announced their engagement in April 2012, after seven years together. They were legally married on the 14th of August 2014. Their wedding followed in a private ceremony at the Chateau Miraval in France on the 23rd of August 2014.

  In July 2005 Pitt accompanied Jolie to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she adopted a girl named Zahara. By the 3rd of December 2005, Pitt was in the process of becoming the adoptive father of Maddox. On the 19th of January 2006, a California judge changed the children's surnames from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt. Jolie gave birth to their daughter Shiloh in Swakopmund, Namibia, on the 27th of May 2006. People bought the North American rights to the first pictures for over $4.1 million, and Hello! paid approximately $3.5 million for the British rights. The proceeds went to charities serving African children. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of the two-month-old, the first time the museum honoured an infant with a statue.

  On the 15th of March 2007, Jolie adopted a 3-year-old boy, Pax, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Pitt adopted him in the United States on the 21st of February 2008. Jolie gave birth to twins, Knox and Vivienne, in Nice, France, on the 12th of July 2008. The first images of the twins were sold jointly to People and Hello! for $14 million, the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The couple donated the proceeds to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

  On the 19th of September 2016, Jolie filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce became legal on the 12th of April 2019. That September, the FBI and the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services investigated Pitt after an anonymous person accused him of being verbally abusive and physical toward one of his children during an incident on a plane. Neither the FBI nor the county agency brought criminal charges.

  In 2022 Pitt sued Jolie for selling her share of a winery they co-owned to a third party. She filed a countersuit alleging that he physically and verbally abused her and their children in an outburst on the plane. Her lawyers also said that he had asked her to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring her from speaking outside court about it.

  The custody dispute began with the divorce filing. Jolie had full custody until May 2021, when Pitt was granted joint custody. In July, Judge John W. Ouderkirk was removed from the case over concerns about his impartiality, because he had not sufficiently disclosed business relationships with Pitt's lawyers. The arrangement reverted to a November 2018 agreement, under which Jolie has primary physical custody and Pitt has "custodial time." In 2022 Pitt began dating Ines de Ramon, a jewelry executive born in 1992 and the ex-wife of actor Paul Wesley. In 2025 Shiloh legally changed her name from Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie.

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• 8. Fame and Frailty

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  Empire named Pitt one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history in 1995. That same year People named him Sexiest Man Alive, an honor he received again in 2000. Forbes put him on its Celebrity 100 list from 2006 to 2008, at numbers 20, 5 and 10. In 2007 he appeared on the Time 100 list. The magazine credited him with using "his star power to get people to look at places and stories that cameras don't usually catch." He returned to the Time 100 in 2009, in the "Builders and Titans" list.

  A 2006 ACNielsen survey in 42 international markets found Pitt and Jolie to be the favorite celebrity endorsers for brands and products worldwide. Pitt appeared in a Heineken commercial that aired during the 2005 Super Bowl, directed by David Fincher. Other commercials included Acura Integra, with the Russian model Tatiana Sorokko, as well as SoftBank and Edwin Jeans. On the 2nd of June 2015, the minor planet 29132 Bradpitt was named in his honor.

  Reuters, in a story titled "The Brangelina fever," said the media hype around the couple in 2006 had reached "the point of insanity." A paparazzi blog called Shiloh's birth "the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ." Two years later, reporters and photographers camped on the promenade in Nice during the two weeks Jolie spent in a seaside hospital.

  In September 2016 Pitt got sober and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In December 2019 he wrote an article for Interview in which he talked about addiction and recovery with Anthony Hopkins, his Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black co-star and a fellow recovering alcoholic. Pitt credits the actor Bradley Cooper with helping him stay sober.

  He has also admitted to using cannabis in the late 1990s to cope with his growing fame. In his words, "I was hiding out from the celebrity thing." He cut back and focused on his work after a trip to Morocco, where he witnessed extreme poverty and suffering.

  In 2022 Pitt said he had struggled for years to recognize people's faces because of prosopagnosia, or face blindness, though he has not been formally diagnosed. In a 2013 interview he said the problem had become so severe that he often wanted to stay home. He has no accounts on any social media platform.

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