In the cover story of the July / August issue of GQ, author Ottessa Moshfegh meets the actor and producer Brad Pitt at his home in the Hollywood Hills. During their conversation, Pitt is open and honest. He talks about the future of his career, the different changes he made to improve his health and his sense of loneliness. He also talks about his upcoming projects, including the action comedy Bullet Train.
Pitt is known as a legendary actor, one of the most influential personalities in Hollywood, possibly the greatest heartthrob of all time. Lately, however, he has been appearing on screen a little more sporadically focusing more on the role of film producer. He tells GQ that he is trying to reflect carefully on his future and on the path he wants to trace for the final stages of an abundantly creative career. “I think I have reached the last stretch, the final semester or quarter. What will this chapter tell? How do I want to structure it?“.
Part of this project includes his production company, Plan B Entertainment. This year, Plan B is producing Women talking, an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel about Mennonite women who band together against their rapists, directed by Sarah Polley. “It’s a profound film like no other made in this decade,” said Pitt.
Yet despite noble ideals as a producer and an increasingly selective actor, Pitt happily lends his talent to some blockbuster when the time is right, especially if there is a personal connection. Between these Bullet Train directed by David Leitch, whose relationship with Pitt dates back to Fight Club in 1999, during the period in which the director was the stunt double for the star, a role that Leitch has played in several films, including Troy And Mr & Mrs Smith. In the film, Pitt plays Ladybug, a killer aboard the Tokyo-Kyoto train who has just recovered from a nervous breakdown and returns to his high-risk profession with a slightly misleading confidence in his eligibility to resume duty..
“You know, you take a month of therapy,” Pitt says of his character, “you have an epiphany, you think you’ve got it all figured out and you’ll never be lost again. That’s all. I understand, I’m ready to leave! ».
Additionally, Pitt tells GQ about his mission to protect his own health. After offering Moshfegh a nicotine mint, he explains that he quit smoking during the pandemic. Although he initially tried to minimize the amount of smoking, he realized that simply cutting down on cigarettes would not be enough: he had to eliminate them. “I don’t have the ability to smoke just one or two a day,” he says. “It’s not part of my way of being. For me it’s all or nothing. I throw myself headlong into things. I have lost my privileges ».
This is one of the many radical changes it has made in recent years to protect its health. After Jolie filed for her divorce in 2016, she quit drinking and spent a year and a half hanging out with Alcoholics Anonymous. “I had a very nice male group there, very reserved and selective, so it was safe,” he tells GQ “because I had heard experiences of other people, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, that were recorded spilling the beans, and this is for me simply atrocious ».
Pitt has spoken in the past of his difficulty remembering new people, recognizing their faces, and he fears that this will give him a certain impression: that he is distant and aloof, inaccessible, self-centered.. Moshfegh, however, finds it the opposite. Pitt is a man who seems deeply committed to creating meaningful connections, probing life’s existential questions, and listening to the personal stories of others.
«I have always felt very alone in my life» he explains «only when I was a child, alone even out here, it is only recently that I have become closer to my friends and my family. What is that line, it could be from Rilke or Einstein, believe it or not, but it was something that was about when you can walk with paradox, when you carry true pain and joy with you at the same time, this is maturity, this is growth ».
Source: Vanity Fair
