Confident, driven and freethinking, no actor embodies the spirit of America quite as much as William Bradley Pitt. The fifty-five-year-old father of six has led a consistently successful career both as an actor and a producer. Whether it is taking the lead in innovative movies such as Moneyball or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, working with unique directors, from Terrence Malick to Quentin Tarantino, or channeling his energy as a producer into getting some fantastic films made that may never otherwise have seen the light of day, Brad Pitt has been fundamental in helping bring the American experience to the screen.    

Brad

roy london

Pitt was born the eldest child of three in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1963. The son of a trucking company owner and a school counsellor, he studied journalism before deciding that movies were his thing. He moved to Los Angeles and took acting classes from the late Roy London, an acclaimed actor, director and playwright. He then played small parts in big TV serials, including international hits Thirtysomething, 21 Jump Street and Growing Pains. 

THE US LANDSCAPE

Pitt’s first major role in film was as a manipulative drug addict in Too Young to Die? It was followed by a defining part in Ridley Scott’s road movie Thelma & Louise. Pitt played a cowboy hitchhiker and became a sex symbol thanks to a steamy scene with Geena Davis! But he followed up with a wholesome role in Robert Redford’s biographical epic A River Runs Through It and a similarly acclaimed part in Edward Zwick’s Legends of the Fall, set in the American West in the early decades of the 20th century.

DARKER MATERIAL

As the 1990s progressed, Pitt expressed his intention to “play someone with flaws.” In the thriller Kalifornia he played a serial killer and in Seven, a detective on the trail of a serial killer! He received his first Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in Terry Gilliam’s dark science fiction film 12 Monkeys. And to play a part in David Fincher’s cult classic Fight Club, he had parts of his teeth removed (and later replaced!) and took lessons in boxing and taekwondo. It seems that Brad Pitt was not without his own struggles, either, as he confessed to GQ magazine: “I can’t remember a day since I got out of college when I wasn’t boozing or had a spliff.” Happily, Pitt quit drinking and went into therapy… but only when his marriage with Angelina Jolie collapsed in 2016. 

UNTOLD STORIES

Pitt cofounded the production company Plan B in 2001, and acts as its CEO. Three of the production company’s movies, The Departed, 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, have won the Oscar for Best Picture; the latter two dealing with the African-American experience. The company also produced the Netflix satirical war comedy War Machine set in Afghanistan, and the biographical comedy-drama film The Big Short, a satire on the 2008 financial crisis, in which Pitt also stars.

BRAD THE DAD

Dedicated to Plan B, Pitt has been happy to take smaller roles in films. They include three Ocean’s series movies and in the Coens’ classic Burn After Reading. An ironic part in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, in which he plays a gypsy Irish man whose accent is so strong that no one understands him, referenced one of Pitt’s earlier films, The Devil’s Own, in which he played an Irishman too authentically for some US critics! Pitt, refreshingly, does not take himself too seriously! “Film feels like a cheap pass for me, as a way to get at those hard feelings,” he said in an interview, “It doesn’t work anymore, especially being a dad.”

Greed and opportunism combine in the Academy Award-nominated tragicomedy The Big Short. Directed by Adam McKay and set in the build-up to the US housing bubble during the 2000s, the movie is an innovative adaptation of Moneyball author Michael Lewis’s best-selling non-fiction book. It stars Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell as big figures on Wall Street, who predict the stock market’s collapse, yet rather than warning the world of it, decide to make a lot of money from it instead. Brad Pitt also plays a role in the film that was brought to the screen by his production company Plan B. The Big Short was widely praised by critics for its depiction of the world of high-finance as both chaotic and unscrupulous, and was further acclaimed for its ability to make a serious, complicated subject seem accessible, entertaining and even empowering.