Brad Pitt is easy to underestimate, and for too many years so almost everyone has done. His perfect appearance, mesmerizing look, dreamy smile, lush blonde hair and effortlessly magnetic charisma helped him become a huge international star in the early '90s, but almost immediately became his biggest curse and the main reason many refused to take him seriously as an actor. Because how hard can it be to do what he does when he looks like that?
But at the very beginning of his professional career – as he became a glamorous and desirable celebrity who could not leave his front door without causing a riot of God – Pitt made it clear through his professional choices that he had no intention of "being beautiful and keeping quiet," that he had no interest in "playing it safe," and that he could not be satisfied with being a "movie star," in the classic sense.
For every predictable and obvious role that required him to play "The Tormented Beauty," he always made sure to take at least one role that would be less predictable and more challenging. His natural curiosity and constant desire to improve in his work pushed him early into the hands of serious and demanding directors who helped him toy with his cinematic and public image and undermine it, and allowed him to test his boundaries, which turned out to be very broad.
For every predictable and obvious role that required him to play "The Tormented Beauty," he always made sure to take at least one role that would be less predictable and more challenging. Pete, Photo: GerryImages
In the process, Pitt also emerged as an intelligent and talented producer who fully understands how the film business works. Through the production company he founded in the early 2000s, he developed many roles for himself and provided a variety of opportunities for uncompromising creators who would otherwise doubt their place in the Hollywood machine.
In this area, too, his record is insanely impressive: three films he co-produced ("The Planters," "12 Years a Slave" and "Moonlight") won the Best Picture Oscar. Four more ("The Tree of Life," "Moneyball," "The Money Machine" and "Selma") settled for nominations in this category.
Still, for all his undisputed accomplishments, if you ask your friends to make a list of the greatest American players of the past 30 years, you can bet that Pitt won't appear in almost any of them, if any.
Why? Perhaps because his qualities and abilities are taken for granted. His enduring stardom tends to overshadow his rare talent. His frequent appearances in tabloids and gossip columns together with his partners (no less famous than him) apparently obscured the fact that over the years he had become one of the finest actors of his generation.
Now, just before Hollywood's eternal golden boy officially reaches his golden age — this Monday marks his 60th birthday — we have the perfect excuse to take a look at his varied and fascinating career, and understand exactly how it happened.
Thelma & Louise | 1991 - The Cowboy
In "Thelma and Louise", photo: from the film
Seven years after arriving in Los Angeles, from Springfield, Missouri, with big dreams in his heart, $300 in his pocket and a "Eli Ohana haircut," 28-year-old Brad Pitt landed his breakout role in the convention-breaking feminist travel film "Thelma & Louise." Up until that moment, his resume consisted mostly of small roles in television soap operas and trashy films, and he rarely got this (small) role, mainly because director Ridley Scott thought he was too young.
But William Baldwin, Scott's original casting, was forced to quit. And of all the other nominees—a dream list that included unknown actors like George Clooney, Mark Raffaello, Robert Downey Jr., Dermot Mulroney and Dylan McDormant—it was Pitt who finally got the opportunity. Why? Geena Davis, who starred in the film alongside Susan Sarandon, insisted on it. "He made me stutter with excitement and get confused in my lines while we were auditioning for him," she said years later. "I said to Ridley, 'Hello! Of course we have to take him."
As J.D.—the cute, flirty hitchhiker who steals Thelma (Davis)'s heart (and money)—Pete got nothing more than a handful of screen minutes. But he used every second of them to demonstrate his natural and inexhaustible charm and become a sex symbol.
Both Thelma and Louise objectify him with overt pleasure that only grows, and his sex scene with Thelma – which encapsulates an unforgettable monologue delivered bare-chested and with a hairdryer in hand – is his big "star is born" moment. After that, nothing was the same anymore. Flowers for Geena Davis.
A river flows between them | 1992 - The Tormented Beauty
In "A River Flows Between Them", photo: from the film
Pitt's first major role in a major studio film found him teaming up with actor-director Robert Redford in a romantic family drama about fishing in the Montana Rivers.
The prevailing opinion in the Ninties was that Pitt was very reminiscent of Redford in his early days, and Radford himself saw the similarities. "I definitely would have played that character myself if I was younger," he said at the time of the decision to cast Pitt as Paul MacLean, the son of a priest endowed with a rebellious nature, self-destructive instinct and a fondness for bitter dropping. "He's kind of a golden boy with a dark side. Brad had it. When I first met him, I said, 'yes, this guy is going to make it.'"
For Pitt, partnering with Redford allowed him to improve as a player and present a different, more dramatic side of himself that doesn't necessarily require him to take off his shirt. On top of that, Redford has always been one of his greatest heroes. In interviews, he often says that the first movie he saw in the cinema was Kid & Cassidy, starring Redford and Paul Newman. Working with him gave him legitimacy and marked him as the possible successor to the legendary star. "It was a big deal for me," Pitt admitted. The two met again ten years later to star together in the thriller Spy Games.
Seven Sins | 1995 - The Innocent Novice
In "Seven Sins", photo: from the film
True, "Winds of Desire" (1994) and "Interview with the Vampire" (1994) were big box office hits that grew Pitt's fan club and established him in the mainstream. But while there are beautiful moments in both of them (in which Pete does look very, very pretty), Pitt himself didn't like them, didn't enjoy doing them, and didn't really connect with their commercial aspects.
So when he went to work with director David Fincher on Seven Sins, a stylish and horrifying serial killer thriller that ends with a particularly shocking scene, he decided to promise that this time things would work differently.
"I told the producers I would make the movie," Pitt recalled a few years ago, "but on one condition: that they don't change the ending. My head stays in the box, and my character has to kill the killer at the end. He won't do the 'right' thing. He won't be able to control his instincts."
On the one hand, the film allowed Pitt to further explore the darker, less flattering side of his persona (something he had already begun doing two years earlier in "California," where he played a serial killer alongside then-girlfriend Juliet Lewis, and in "A True Affair," where he played the petty role of an incorrigible Stellan).
On the other hand, just like his character in the film, Pitt got to work with an experienced co-star who took him under his wing and taught him some important tricks (Morgan Freeman). As a bonus, Gwyneth Paltrow, who was his partner at the time, starred alongside him as his wife (it's her head inside the box).
The result is one of the best and most influential Hollywood thrillers of the '90s, and one of the few that doesn't have a happy ending.
12 Monkeys | 1995 - The Mad Man
In "12 Monkeys", photo: from the film
Ironically, the same year Pitt first won the title of Sexiest Man in the World, he also received his first Oscar nomination, winning his first Golden Globe Award, for an obviously anti-sexy performance.
In "12 Monkeys," Terry Gilliam's wonderful and prophetic sci-fi film, Pitt plays a mentally disturbed man in a psychiatric hospital who never stops spewing nonsense at the pace. Gilliam admitted he had doubts about the young star. But on the very first day of filming, when he saw the insane amount of energy Pete brought to the role, he realized he had made the right choice. "When we finished filming, Brad could barely stand because he was drained. He just exploded on set."
Bruce Willis may be the main star of the film (and he did an excellent job there, too), but Pitt's manic, dizzying, slightly gimmicky appearance – which includes a variety of tics, winks and sharp, involuntary physical movements – left a serious mark. In real time, she also provided the first proof that Pete might be the real deal.
Fight Club | 1999 - The Anarchist
In "Fight Club", photo: from the movie
Pitt's second collaboration with David Fincher spawned Tyler Durden, arguably his most iconic role. However, despite the mythological status of Fight Club today, when it was released, the film was actually considered a huge failure, both critically and financially.
In several interviews over the years, Pitt enjoyed recounting how he sat with Edward Norton at the Venice Film Festival premiere and suddenly noticed that he and Norton were the only ones in the theater laughing at the jokes. Everyone else, it turns out, didn't really know what to do with themselves.
But even in real time, Pitt realized that Fight Club was going to be something special. "While filming, I already knew. I had this feeling when we did Seven Sins. I had that feeling in A True Romance—a feeling that signals to you that you're headed in the right direction, that you're right. I can already recognize when something extraordinary happens, and that's what happened with Fight Club. I don't give a damn about how much money the film made in its opening weekend at the box office."
So if Pitt began the decade as a beautiful, all-American cowboy, the one who makes the girls of the beautiful sex sigh every time he crosses the screen, then thanks to the violent and uninhibited vision of Fincher (and Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the book on which the film was based) he ended it as ubermensch an anarchist, nihilist, fascist, terrorist and anti-capitalist. Pete completely destroyed his image (against the backdrop of the Pixies' "Where is my Mind") and you could see that he was enjoying every moment.
And yes, even when his body was completely covered in blood and grease, he still looked like a billion dollars.
Ocean's 11 | 2001 - Sidekick
In Ocean's 11, photo: from the movie
Let's face it: during the first half of his career, Brad Pitt appeared in quite a few obscure films. "Sleepers" (1996), "Intimate Rival" (1997), "Seven Years in Tibet" (1997), "Meet Joe Black" (1998), "The Mexican" (2001)—all of them may have looked good on paper, and none of them are outright terrible (except for "The Mexican," perhaps). But in all of them, Pete often seems bored and/or frustrated, and in all of them he gives the feeling that he would rather be somewhere else.
"Ocean's 11," Steven Soderbergh's lighthearted, star-studded crime comedy, on the other hand, is the exception: a high-quality, airy, thoughtful and entertaining commercial film that channels the Hollywood charm that oozes from the movie stars of yesteryear and crowns Pitt — and his best friend, George Clooney — as the successors of the mythological canvas idols of the '50s, '60s and '70s.
Pitt, who plays Rusty, Clooney's right-hand man, seems more relaxed than ever in his own skin (and in the perfect wardrobe chosen for him), and Soderbergh knows exactly how to use it. Even when he just eats nachos, he looks like the coolest person in the world. No wonder, then, that Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13 (the smuger and the less good) are the only sequels Pitt agreed to make. Of all his "predictable" choices, Ocean's 11 is the most successful.
Troy | 2004 - Achilles' heel
In Troy,
The historical epic "Troy", in which our beautiful hero plays the mythological Greek warrior Achilles, is not a very good film ("Gladiator", which preceded him by several years, does not see him from a meter). But it holds particular importance in Pitt's career trajectory, as it marks the last time he agreed to harness himself to a project he didn't really like.
Pitt landed the role in Troy out of a lack of choice after two other films in which he really wanted to participate—one a black-and-white silent film by the Coen brothers, and the other an ambitious film called The Spring, by Darren Aronofsky—failed to get off the ground.
After his disappointment with Troy, Pitt vowed to use the production company he founded in 2001 with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, to work as much as possible with visionary directors (such as the Coen brothers and Aronofsky) and to make as many challenging and interesting films as possible that would not have made it to the screen without him.
True, before he could fulfill his promise, Pitt was still required to star in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), a hollow and graceless action movie that would have quickly evaporated from consciousness had it not brought Pitt and Angelina Jolie together and marked the beginning of a new and particularly disturbed media carnival that would last about a decade.
But by 2006, Pitt had already done a small but significant role in Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babylon, and in 2007 he produced and starred in New Zealand director Andrew Ford's revisionist and artistic western The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford, who cast him as the famous gunman and provided him with one of his most fascinating and reflexive roles.
Read and Burn | 2007 - The Idiot
In "Read and Burn", photo: from the film
Pitt's best comedic role, in my opinion at least, came in this very stupid spy plot that came out of the hands of Joel and Ethan Cohen (second place: his role in "Snatch").
As Chad Feldheimer, a personal trainer at a gym who doesn't possess much intelligence, Pete wears a wide range of absurd facial expressions, adopts goofy speech and releases some outlandish (and hilarious) sentences.
After reading the script for the first time, and hearing that the role of Chad was written especially for him, Pitt said he didn't know if he should feel flattered or offended. "I didn't know how to approach this character," he said in a 2008 interview. "I mean, he's such an idiot! Joel was silent for a moment, looked at me and said, 'I'm sure you'll manage.'"
Joel was right, of course. Pitt's performance, which culminates with a memorable face he makes just before George Clooney accidentally shoots him, is a gift to the world.
Tree of Life | 2011 - The Father
In "The Tree of Life", photo: from the film
2011 was a very important year for Pete. Two films in which he starred (and which he produced) – "The Tree of Life" and "Moneyball" – were nominated for Oscars in the Best Picture category. Meanwhile, "The Tree of Life" also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and "Moneyball" earned him a second Oscar nomination, this time in the Best Actor category.
Although "Moneyball" is also a fun and intelligent film in which Pitt does one of his more precise roles, "The Tree of Life," the hallucinatory and intuitive masterpiece of the hidden genius Terrence Malick, is undoubtedly the more significant and interesting of the two.
Pitt, who plays a tough, authoritarian patriarch in 50s Texas, drew inspiration from his childhood and father for the role. However, in interviews accompanying the film's release, Pitt emphasized that it was not an autobiographical role.
"It's really not my dad, but I definitely understand and know the mentality that 'dad knows best.' The oppression he exerts on his children, the pressures he is under as the leader of the family, the feeling that he does not live up to his own expectations, and on top of that, all the desires and desires he has for himself. The tragedy is to come home and spend it on the children. This is the vicious cycle in which the family is trapped."
Either way, Pitt is clearly familiar with the material Malik dealt with. He disappears into the character completely, delivering one of his most complex and impressive performances. In this film, he rises to the league as an actor.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood | 2019 - The Star Who Saw It All
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, photo: from the film
Pitt's first collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, in Inglourious Basterds, is also outstanding, of course. But their second collaboration, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, provided Pitt with the ultimate role for him and earned him a well-deserved Oscar.
As the aging and unemployed stuntman Cliff Booth, Pitt carries the weight of a 30-year career, the devastating impact of decades in the spotlight, and the ghosts of all his high-profile relationships (the film was filmed in the shadow of his ugly and never-ending divorce from Angelina Jolie). The body is no longer what it used to be, and neither is the image (both in the film and in reality), but Pitt channels it all into the character, demonstrating complete control over every aspect of his appearance and delivering a perfect acting display that fits in the pantheon.
The way it bounces to the roof to fix the antenna of the TV. The way he prepares dinner for his dog (and himself). The scenes where he travels around Los Angeles. The scene where he confronts Bruce Lee. And, of course, the brutal, crappy grand finale that brings him and his best friend, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), together with Charles Manson's murderous fans.
32 years since he hit the screen with his cute butt in Thelma & Louise, Pete still holds up as one of the biggest movie stars we've ever had. But he's not only a big star, he's also a big player. Bigger than Redford. Bigger than Clooney. Bigger than McQueen. It's time for people to understand this.
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