The actor and producer talk about his two big movies this year, masculinity, his divorce from Angelina Jolie, alcoholism, and his future in the industry.
“If you want to go fast, go alone; to go far, go together”, murmured Brad Pitt. Over his left shoulder was Mars, a sadly small reddish sphere, and to his right was Jupiter, grander and more illuminated as a disco ball.
We were sitting across from each other on a subterranean floor of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, in an exhibit that was closed to the public and we were talking about Stoic Men.
Pitt has played several of that breed on film, two of them this year alone: Cliff Booth, the swinging stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Roy McBride, an astronaut sent to parts especially remote and lonely parts of the galaxy in Ad Astra: To the Stars.
Movie superstars have their signature touches. Although Pitt has proven more than capable of playing chatty men in Twelve Monkeys or Snatch: Pigs and Diamonds, he's particularly captivating when it's obvious he's holding something back. He really brings to life the man who says nothing superfluous, an achievement since he has starred in two famously loquacious Quentin Tarantino films.
"I grew up with this motto of 'Be strong, be able, show no weakness,'" Pitt told me. He was raised in Springfield, Missouri, as the oldest of three children and with a father who owned a trucking company. At 55, the actor is at a point in his life in which he sees his father in all the roles he plays. “In a way, I'm copying it,” he said. “He grew up in an environment of poverty and strong adversity, and he dedicated himself to giving me a better life than he had. Which he did. But he was a very Stoic-like person.”
He is a lineage that has served him better in his on-screen roles than in real life. In this year in which he has had two great performances, Pitt is thinking a lot about what kind of person he has become. “I really appreciate the emphasis on being capable and doing what you need to do with humility, but that approach requires self-assessment,” he said, hunched in his chair. “It is almost a denial of that part of oneself that is weak, that has doubts, despite the even thoughts that we all experience. I definitely think you can't know yourself until you identify and accept those parts of yourself."
Within hours of the conversation, friends and family began mass-messaging me: What was Brad Pitt like in person? What did he look like? For most of the conversation, Pitt seemed both apologetic and private; it was as if at times he was the person he confessed to and at others, the one receiving the confession.
He was wearing a gray beret, a gray T-shirt, and gray hair peeked out of his beard. I was surprised to see certain tattoos on his arms, such as a quote from the Persian poet Rumi, a motorcycle, the word "Invictus" and a man with his shadow. Although, in general, he looked just like Brad Pitt.
I didn't have to ask JAMES GRAY if she wrote Ad Astra thinking Pitt was going to star in it; I knew this was the case when I saw the movie, in which the other characters marvel that Pitt's astronaut has a heart rate that never exceeds 80 beats per minute.
Gray likes to tell a story about Pitt that shows how even-tempered the actor is. It is an anecdote that also answers the doubts of those who have wondered why Pitt was not there when Moonlight (Moonlight), a film of which he was executive director, won the Oscar two years ago.
Pitt was indeed in Los Angeles that night, but he preferred not to go to the delivery and instead went to Gray's house for spaghetti dinner. It is a clear example of his priorities when what was at stake was to win the most coveted award in Hollywood.
While Pitt, Gray, and a few other friends were having dinner, Gray's wife was watching the Oscars broadcast in another room. It was thus, secondhand, that Pitt learned that his film was part of one of the strangest moments in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: that it was first announced, by mistake, that the statuette was for The Land when in reality he had won Moonlight.
Well, Gray says that Pitt reacted to what happened concisely. "He said, 'Oh, okay, that's great,'" Gray recalled, imitating the actor's cool, languid tone between laughs. “He wasn't ungrateful, sure, but Brad doesn't get caught up in pomp and ceremony. I think he always knows how to stay focused."
