Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2007
Born	William Bradley Pitt
Years active	1987-present
Spouse	Jennifer Aniston (2000-2005)
Partner	Angelina Jolie (2005-present)
Awards	Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture 1995 Twelve Monkeys Volpi Cup for Best Actor 2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an Academy award-nominated American actor, film producer, and social activist. He became famous during the mid 1990s after starring in several major Hollywood films. Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, both of which were for his role in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys.

Pitt is consistently cited by popular media as one of the most attractive men alive and is regarded as a Hollywood A-lister. His former marriage to actress Jennifer Aniston and current relationship with actress Angelina Jolie have been widely covered in the world media. He is the father of four children with Jolie, one biological, all of whom have also received media coverage. Since his connection with Jolie, he has become increasingly involved in social issues, both domestically and internationally.

Early life

Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the son of Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, a truck company owner. Along with his brother Doug and sister Julie Neal, he grew up in Springfield, Missouri, where the family moved soon after his birth. Pitt was raised a Baptist. He attended Kickapoo High School, where he was involved in sports, debating, student government, and acting. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

Career

Moderate success

In 1988, Pitt had his first starring role, in The Dark Side of the Sun, where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The movie was shot in Yugoslavia in the summer of '88 with Pitt being paid $1,523 per week for seven weeks. However, with editing nearly complete, war broke out and much of the footage was lost; the film was released years later. Pitt won a part in the TV movie Too Young to Die?, about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. Pitt played the part of a drug addict, Billy Canton, who took advantage of a runaway played by Juliette Lewis.

In 1991, Pitt starred, along with Vera Martins, as Joe Maloney in Across the Tracks, in which he portrayed a high school runner with a difficult criminal brother played by Ricky Schroder. Pitt attracted broader public attention from a supporting role in Thelma & Louise, where he played a small-time criminal drifter who befriends Thelma (Geena Davis). His love scene with Davis, which showed Pitt topless and wearing a cowboy hat has been referred to as "iconic", often cited as the moment that defined Pitt as a "sex symbol".

After Thelma & Louise, Pitt starred alongside Catherine Keener and Nick Cave in the low budget, Tom DiCillo-directed 1991 film Johnny Suede, as an awkward dreamer who aspired to be a big-haired rock star. Pitt had agreed to play the part before Thelma & Louise was released. After appearing in Cool World, Pitt starred in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It in 1992, for which Pitt learned fly fishing by casting off of Hollywood buildings. In 1993 came Kalifornia, a road movie in which he played a scruffy serial killer alongside Juliette Lewis and X-Files actor David Duchovny.

1994-2000: Mainstream success and acclaim

In 1994, Pitt played vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the movie adaptation of Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire. The role of the eighteenth-century vampire required Pitt to endure several hours of make-up being applied every day to achieve the characteristic white skin; Pitt wore a pair of luminous green eyes, vampire fangs, and a shoulder-length hairpiece to complete the appearance. Pitt's co-stars included the eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst, Tom Cruise, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. He then starred in Legends of the Fall and Se7en. In Se7en, Pitt starred alongside Morgan Freeman as the police detective David Mills who hunts a serial killer played by Kevin Spacey. Pitt was then nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Jeffrey Goines in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys.

In 1997, Pitt starred alongside Harrison Ford as the IRA terrorist Rory Devany in The Devil's Own, the first of several films where Pitt used an Irish accent in his performance. That same year he played the main role of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in the Jean Jacques Annaud film Seven Years in Tibet. Pitt trained for months for the role, which demanded a great deal of trekking and mountain climbing, by rock climbing in California and the Alps with his co-star, English actor David Thewlis. Due to the themes of Tibetan nationalism in the film, the Chinese government banned Pitt and Thewlis from entering China for life.

In 1998, Pitt starred as the main character in the film Meet Joe Black, where he played a personification of Death inhabiting the body of a young man in order to learn what it is like to be human. The film gave Pitt another chance to work alongside Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, with whom he had previously worked on Legends of the Fall. In 1999, Pitt starred in Fight Club, an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel. Directed by Se7en's David Fincher, Pitt portrayed the highly complex and colorful character of Tyler Durden.

In 2000, Pitt played the role of Mickey, an Irish Gypsy boxer in the gangster movie Snatch, alongside Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and Benicio del Toro. The film was a wild caper involving a diamond heist, the Russian and American mafia and the shady underground world, that saw Pitt brought in as a ringer by two failing promoters. The movie saw him moving on from the Northern Irish accent he attempted in The Devil's Own; Pitt created a just-barely-intelligible accent suggesting the Irish Gypsies, referred to as Pikeys in the movie. Pitt continued to train for the role, and honed his boxing skills at Ricky English's gym in Watford.

2000s: Ascension to the A-list

In 2000, Pitt filmed the Cold War thriller Spy Game in which he starred alongside veteran actor Robert Redford, who played the role of his mentor. In 2001, Pitt worked with long-term friend Julia Roberts in the comical road movie The Mexican. At the end of the year, Pitt finished filming Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney and Matt Damon, a remake of the 1960s version which starred Frank Sinatra.

Brad Pitt at the Incirlik hospital, Incirlik Air Base

Since then, he has starred in numerous films, including Ocean's Twelve and the epic Troy, based on the Iliad, in which he portrayed the legendary hero Achilles. Ironically, during the production of Troy, Pitt injured his Achilles tendon, delaying production for several weeks. In 2005, Pitt starred in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which he and Angelina Jolie played husband and wife assassins.

In March 2006, it was announced that Paramount had purchased the rights to The Sparrow for Pitt's production company, Plan B, and that Pitt would be playing the lead role of Sandoz. In June 2006 it was announced that Paramount and Plan B will be working on a new zombie film called World War Z, based on the book of the same name by Max Brooks.

Pitt made his return to Hollywood in late 2006 with Alejandro González Iñárritu's critically acclaimed Babel, starring alongside Cate Blanchett. The movie garnered a total of seven Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, one of which was a Golden Globe nomination for Pitt as Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. The movie has since become Pitt's highest grossing drama. That same year, he also produced the eventual Best Picture winner, The Departed. In 2005 he produced and starred in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, directed by Andrew Dominik, but the film was not released until late into 2007. Although both Pitt and the film gained much critical success (the film appeared on many 'Top 10' lists of 2007) it performed poorly at the box office.

Other projects

Pitt has appeared in television commercials designed for the Asian market, advertising such diverse products as Edwin Jeans / Soft Bank Telecom (cell phone company), the Toyota Altis, and Japanese canned coffee. He also appeared in a Heineken commercial which aired during the 2005 Super Bowl; it was directed by David Fincher, who directed Pitt in the feature films Se7en and Fight Club.

Together with Jennifer Aniston and Paramount Pictures head Brad Grey, Pitt founded the production company Plan B. Aniston is no longer a partner in the company, although she is still attached to many projects that were set up before her divorce from Pitt. The company produced the blockbuster Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp, as well as The Departed and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Pitt made a guest appearance in an eighth-season episode of Friends, as a man who has a grudge against Aniston's character Rachel Green, lent his voice on an episode of King of the Hill, where he played Boomhauer's brother, Patch Boomhauer, and on an episode of MTV's Jackass, in which he took part in a staged abduction of himself. In a later Jackass episode, he and several cast-members ran wild through the streets of Los Angeles in gorilla suits.

Pitt has been an active supporter of research into diseases such as AIDS. He is the narrator of the acclaimed Public Television series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge, which discusses current important global health issues. Pitt is behind Not On Our Watch, an organization that focuses global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities such as in Darfur, along with George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Jerry Weintraub.

Pitt is also a knowledgeable fan of architecture, particularly that of Frank Lloyd Wright, and has helped the National Trust for Historic Preservation raise money.

Personal life

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pitt dated several of his co-stars, including Robin Givens (Head Of The Class), Jill Schoelen (Cutting Class), Juliette Lewis (ten years his junior, Juliette was sixteen years old when they started dating) (Too Young to Die? and Kalifornia), and Gwyneth Paltrow (Se7en), with whom he had a much-publicized engagement. Pitt also dated actresses Sinitta, Thandie Newton, and Jitka Pohlodek.

Marriage to Jennifer Aniston

Pitt met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston in 1998 and married her during an enclosed wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. The couple ensured that the ceremony would be a private affair by hiring hundreds of guards to block any attempts of invasion by the paparazzi; just one wedding picture was released to the media. Not long after the wedding, Pitt sued Damiani International, the company which had made the wedding ring he gave Aniston, for selling replica "Brad and Jennifer" rings. According to Pitt, the ring was his design and was to be exclusive. Under the settlement reached in January 2002, Pitt would design jewelry for Damiani that Aniston would model in ads, and the company would stop selling the copies.

Though their marriage was, for years, considered the rare Hollywood success, rumors of marital problems began circulating, and the Pitts announced their separation on January 7, 2005. As Pitt's marriage to Aniston drew to a close, he and actress Angelina Jolie were involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal in which Jolie was often painted as the "other woman", largely due to their chemistry during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. While Jolie and Pitt both denied any claims of adultery, speculations continued to mount throughout 2004 and early 2005. In an interview with Ann Curry in June 2005, Jolie explained, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."

In early 2005, the concept of a "troubled marriage" - and arguably his own - inspired Pitt to cooperate with photographer Steven Klein for a photoshoot entitled "Domestic Bliss" for W magazine. The spread showed Pitt and Jolie as a 1963 married couple with children. Pitt expressed the desire to tell a darker, truer tale, one that explored the "unidentifiable malaise" that often haunts a seemingly happy couple. "You don't know what's wrong", he remarked, "because the marriage is everything you signed up for." For her part, Aniston later cited the shoot as evidence that Pitt has "a sensitivity chip that's missing."

Aniston filed for divorce on March 25; the divorce was finalized on October 2, 2005.

Relationship with Angelina Jolie

One month after Aniston filed for divorce, in April 2005, a set of paparazzi photos emerged that seemed to confirm the rumors of a relationship between Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie. The photos, which were reportedly sold for $500,000, showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer, the pair were seen together with increasing frequency, and the entertainment media dubbed the couple "Brangelina". Two months later, the highly-anticipated July 2005 issue of W magazine hit newsstands, featuring Pitt and Jolie posed as a couple.

In July 2005, Pitt accompanied Jolie to Ethiopia, where Jolie adopted her second child, a six-month-old girl named Zahara; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt the child together. In December 2005, it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie's two children as his own; per the legal requirements, classified advertisements in the Los Angeles paper Daily Commerce announced the name change request. On January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request, and the children's legal surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt".

During a charity trip to Haiti with Wyclef Jean, rumors began to circulate that Jolie was pregnant. On January 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed to People magazine that she was pregnant with Pitt's child. On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, at the Cottage Medi-Clinic Hospital in Swakopmund, Namibia. Public interest in the child was immense, as evidenced by an August 2006 survey, in which 41 percent of participating 18-to-24-year-old American adults correctly identified that the couple had named their baby Shiloh.

Pitt and Jolie are not married. In 2006, Pitt said, "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."

The Jolie-Pitt children

Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt

Born on August 5, 2001 as Rath Vibol in Cambodia; adopted at seven months old on March 10, 2002. Prior to the adoption, he lived in an orphanage in Cambodia's second-largest city, Battambang. Jolie's adoption of Maddox, which took place during her former marriage to actor Billy Bob Thornton, is often credited with sparking the celebrity adoption trend of the 2000s. Maddox has gained considerable celebrity in his own right; he appears regularly in the tabloid media and was named the "cutest celebrity kid" in 2006.

Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt

Born on November 29, 2003 as Pham Quang Sang in Vietnam; adopted at three years old on March 16, 2007. On March 2, 2007, Vu Duc Long, the head of Vietnam's international adoption department, confirmed that Jolie had filed papers to adopt a child from Vietnam. Two weeks later, on March 16, Jolie traveled to Vietnam with Maddox to pick up her new son. Pax had lived in the Tam Binh orphanage since he was found abandoned outside a Ho Chi Minh City hospital shortly after his birth. Since the orphanage does not allow unmarried couples to adopt, Jolie adopted Pax as a single parent, with Pitt later adopting his son domestically.

Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt

Born on January 8, 2005 as Tena Adam or Yemsrach in Ethiopia; adopted at 6 months old on July 6, 2005. Jolie adopted her from a Wide Horizons for Children orphanage in Addis Ababa. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara was hospitalized for salmonella-intestinal infection, as well as dehydration and malnutrition. Jolie stated that "she was six months and not nine pounds. Her skin, you could squeeze it, it stuck together". Although it was initially reported in the media that Zahara had been orphaned by AIDS, in 2007 media outlets stated that Zahara's biological mother, Mentewabe Dawit, was still alive and had abandoned her shortly after giving birth. Dawit denied reports claiming she wanted the child back, instead saying she thought Zahara was a "very fortunate human being to be adopted by a world famous lady."

Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt

Born on May 27, 2006 at Cottage Medi-Clinic Hospital in Swakopmund, Namibia; Pitt and Jolie's only biological child. Shiloh was born by a scheduled cesarean section due to breech presentation; Jolie was assisted during the birth by the couple's Los Angeles obstetrician and local staff. Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter would have a Namibian passport. The couple decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images themselves, rather than allowing paparazzi to take these extremely valuable snapshots. People magazine paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide - the most expensive celebrity image of all time. All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Pitt and Jolie. On July 26, 2006, Madame Tussauds of New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; she was the first infant to be recreated in wax by Madame Tussauds.

On February 23, 2008, People magazine revealed a picture of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the Film Independent's Spirit Awards. Jolie was very obviously pregnant, and a companion article states that a friend of the couple says Jolie and Pitt are "thrilled to be adding to their brood."

Life in New Orleans

The family divides its time between Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana. In an interview with the Times-Picayune, while filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pitt said:

I can't describe why we're allowed to live a more normal life (in New Orleans). Living in the French Quarter is a thrill for us. We have some semblance of real family life. People have been very, very gracious with us. If we're on the front deck, people go by and say, 'Hi.' Then they go on their way, very friendly.

In December 2006, Pitt gathered a group of housing professionals together in the Hurricane Katrina-stricken New Orleans to begin planning a project that Pitt calls Make It Right, with the goal of financing and constructing 150 new houses in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. The houses are being designed with an emphasis on sustainability and affordability, with the hope that the project can and will be replicated throughout the city. Thirteen architectural firms are involved in the project, many of which are donating their services. Pitt and philanthropist Steve Bing have each committed to matching $5 million in donations.

Religious views

In an October 7, 2007 interview, Pitt told PARADE that he is no longer a fundamentalist Christian. In this interview, Pitt said:

I always had a lot of questions about the world, even in kindergarten. A big question to me was fairness. If I'd grown up in some other religion, would I get the same shot at Heaven as a Christian has? My mom would come into my room and talk to me. I was very fortunate to have that dialogue with her, but in high school I started to realize that I felt differently from others.

Popular esteem

In 1995, Pitt was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history. Pitt has also twice been named the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.

Pitt was also prominently featured in the December 2006 Art Issue of Vanity Fair. He appears on the cover in nothing but a pair of white boxers. The cover promotes an article on the Robert Wilson video portraits, a production of LAB HD that includes numerous celebrities and noted personalities. This cover has drawn criticism from Pitt because although he had signed a release for the image, he did not expect it to end up on the cover of Vanity Fair more than a year later. The video portrait, which represents Pitt's first effort in avant-garde cinema, was exhibited at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2007, Pitt was listed among artists and entertainers as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. He was credited, along with his best friend Tiago Miranda Paulo, with using "his star power to get people to look at places and stories that cameras don't usually catch."

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes and Awards
1987	No Way Out	Officer at party
	No Man's Land	Waiter
	Less Than Zero	Partygoer
	Cutting Class	Dwight Ingalls	First major role
1990	Too Young to Die?	Billy Canton	With Juliette Lewis
1991	Across the Tracks	Joe Maloney	Athletics teen drama
	Thelma & Louise	J.D.	First mainstream film
	Johnny Suede	Johnny Suede
1992	Contact		Short
	Cool World	Detective Frank Harris
	A River Runs Through It	Paul Maclean	Directed by Robert Redford
1993	Kalifornia	Early Grayce	With David Duchovny
	True Romance	Floyd
1994	The Favor	Elliott Fowler
	Interview with the Vampire	Louis de Pointe du Lac
	Legends of the Fall	Tristan Ludlow
1995	Se7en	David Mills
	Twelve Monkeys	Jeffrey Goines	Won - Golden Globe
1996	Sleepers	Michael Sullivan
1997	The Devil's Own	Francis "Frankie" Austin McQuire/Rory Devaney
	Seven Years in Tibet	Heinrich Harrer	Tibetan nationalism saw Pitt banned from China for life.
	The Dark Side of the Sun	Rick	Filmed in 1988 in Yugoslavia
1998	Meet Joe Black	Joe Black/Man in the Coffee Shop
1999	Being John Malkovich	Himself	Cameo
	Fight Club	Tyler Durden
2000	Snatch	Mickey O'Neil
2001	The Mexican	Jerry Welbach	With Julia Roberts
	Spy Game	Tom Bishop
	Ocean's Eleven	Rusty Ryan
2002	Full Frontal	Brad/Himself
	Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	Brad, Bachelor #1
2003	Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas	Sinbad	Voice Actor
	Abby Singer	Himself	Cameo
2004	Troy	Achilles
	Ocean's Twelve	Rusty Ryan
2005	Mr. & Mrs. Smith	John Smith	With Angelina Jolie
2006	Babel	Richard
2007	Ocean's Thirteen	Rusty Ryan
	The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford	Jesse James
2008	Burn After Reading	Chad Feldheimer	post-production
	The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	Benjamin Button	post-production
	Dirty Tricks	John Dean	in-production
2009	Tree of Life	Mr. O'Brien	in-production

Producer

• The Departed (2006)
• Running with Scissors (2006)
• Year of the Dog (2007) (executive producer)
• A Mighty Heart (2007) (Co-producer)
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
• Shantaram (2008) (Co-producer)

Awards and nominations

Awards won:

• 1993: ShoWest Convention: Male Star of Tomorrow
• 1995: MTV Movie Awards: Best Male Performance for Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
• 1995: MTV Movie Awards: Most Desirable Male for Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
• 1996: MTV Movie Awards: Most Desirable Male for Se7en
• 1996: Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Supporting Actor for Twelve Monkeys
• 1996: Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for Twelve Monkeys
• 1996: Sci-Fi Universe Magazine: Best Supporting Actor in a Genre Motion Picture for Twelve Monkeys
• 1997: Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Favorite Supporting Actor, Science Fiction for Twelve Monkeys
• 1998: Rembrandt Awards: Best Actor for Seven Years in Tibet
• 2004: Teen Choice Awards: Choice Movie Actor, Drama/Action Adventure for Troy
• 2005: People's Choice Awards: Favorite Leading Man
• 2006: MTV Movie Awards: Best Fight Scene for Mr. & Mrs. Smith
• 2007: Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup best actor: Best Actor for The Assassination of Jesse James

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Awards nominations:

• 1995: Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama for Legends of the Fall
• 1995: Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Best Actor for Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
• 1996: Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Twelve Monkeys
• 1995: MTV Movie Awards: Best On-Screen Duo for Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
• 1996: MTV Movie Awards: Best Male Performance for Twelve Monkeys
• 1996: MTV Movie Awards: Best On-Screen Duo for Se7en
• 2000: Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Favorite Action Team for Fight Club
• 2001: Golden Satellite Awards: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Comedy or Musical for Snatch
• 2001: Teen Choice Awards: Choice Chemistry for The Mexican
• 2002: Emmy Awards: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for Friends ("The One with the Rumor")
• 2002: MTV Movie Awards: Best On-Screen Team for Ocean's Eleven
• 2004: Kids' Choice Awards: Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie for Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
• 2005: Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards: Best Acting Ensemble for Ocean's Twelve
• 2006: MTV Movie Awards: Best On-Screen Kiss for Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• 2007: Golden Globes: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for Babel

See also

• Supercouple

External links

• Brad Pitt at IMDb
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• Brad Pitt at People.com
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• Roles turned down by Brad Pitt
• About.com Profile of Brad Pitt, Activist & Actor
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• Not On Our Watch: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Jerry Weintraub