Brad Pitt Stripper Chauffer Now a Hollywood icon, he once drove dancers to and from bachelor parties. Pitt talks about his past, present and future.
By Jonathan Brandis
I
n the parking lot outside a Los Angeles photo studio, a scruffy-looking guy sporting a goatee, black T-shirt and motorcycle boots sits on the curb puffing a cigarette. He’s listening intently to a stylish man rave about a cool camera shop. A passerby would barely notice the pair as they head into the building. But when the photographer starts shooting, the bearded guy seems to undergo a transformation. Grooving to Jimi Hendrix on the sound system, he assumes an expression of ineffable cool, his posture somewhere between rakish and regal. He radiates glamour by the gigawatt. Suddenly, he’s Brad Pitt. That name, of course, refers to several entities that occupy the same broadshouldered, 5-foot-11-inch frame. There’s the actor, whose talent and charisma draw crowds to movie theaters worldwide. There’s the celebrity, twice declared “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine, whose private life has been a source of public fascination for more than a decade. There’s the Brad Pitt of the past, who has put his stints as a serial romancer of co-stars (Gwyneth Paltrow, Robin Givens, Juliette Lewis) and errant husband of Jennifer Aniston (from whom he was divorced in 2005) far behind him. Now 47, Pitt is an unabashed family man. Fatherhood is, indeed, his most consuming project: raising an unruly brood of six children ages 2 to 9 — three of them adopted, three biological, born in five different countries — with partner
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Angelina Jolie. Their effect on Pitt has been, by his own account, profound. He credits parenthood, in great part, for his hard-won maturity. “Kids hold up a mirror to you,” he says in his first extensive interview since 2009. “You can’t make excuses. You’ve got to make sure they’ve brushed their teeth and eaten a good breakfast. You want to be present if they wake up with a bad dream.” The responsibility weighs heavily on the now-middle-aged actor. In a display of emotion any parent would relate to, Pitt says fears about his kids’ safety “keep me up at night.” But unlike in most families, Pitt’s worries have an added dimension. “We’re hunted,” he says, flexing his tattooed, muscular forearm as if contemplating retaliation. “Our kids have to live behind a gate. Outside, there are people with cameras. “But I’ll take the trade-off. I never knew I was capable of experiencing so much love.” In his newest movie, the sprawling and poetic Tree of Life — directed by the legendary Terrence Malick and opening in some cities this weekend — Pitt plays a father of three boys in 1950s Texas. (One son grows up to be an architect, played by Sean Penn.) That’s fitting: Parenthood is increasingly central to Pitt’s sense of self, influencing everything from the movies he chooses to make — “I want to leave some work behind that my kids will be proud of” — to his vision of the future continues on page 23
Add in a black cap and Pitt, pictured here at t 85th annual Academcy Awards, has come a lo ways since his college days at the University Missouri-Columbia. Photo by Greg Mitchell.