Brad Pitt

William Bradley "Brad" Pitt 

18 December 1963

An American actor and producer. Pitt attended Kickapoo High School, where he was a member of the golf, swimming and tennis teams. He participated in the school's Key and Forensics clubs, in school debates, and in musicals. Following his graduation from high school, Pitt enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1982, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. As graduation approached, Pitt did not feel ready to settle down. He loved films—"a portal into different worlds for me"—and, since films were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Two weeks before earning his degree, Pitt left the university and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting lessons and worked odd jobs.

Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the road movie "Thelma & Louise" (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with "A River Runs Through It" (1992), "Interview with the Vampire" (1994), and "Legends of the Fall" (1994). He gave critically acclaimed performances in the crime thriller "Seven" and the science fiction film "12 Monkeys" (both 1995), the latter earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination. Pitt starred in the cult film "Fight Club" (1999) and the major international hit "Ocean's Eleven" (2001) and its sequels, "Ocean's Twelve" (2004) and "Ocean's Thirteen" (2007). His greatest commercial successes have been "Troy" (2004), "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (2005), and "World War Z" (2013). Pitt received his second and third Academy Award nominations for his leading performances in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008) and "Moneyball" (2011). He produced "The Departed" (2006) and "12 Years a Slave" (2013), both of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and also "The Tree of Life" and "Moneyball", both of which garnered Best Picture nominations.

He has received a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and three Academy Awardnominations in acting categories, and received two further Academy Award nominations, winning one, for productions of his film production company Plan B Entertainment. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.

  As actor, producer

• Hunk (1987)
• No Way Out (1987)
• No Man's Land (1987)
• Less Than Zero (1987)
• The Dark Side of the Sun (1988)
• Happy Together (1989)
• Cutting Class (1989)
• Too Young to Die? (1990)
• Across the Tracks (1991)
• Thelma & Louise (1991)
• Johnny Suede (1991)
• Contact (1992)
• Cool World (1992)
• A River Runs Through It (1992)
• Kalifornia (1993)
• True Romance (1993)
• The Favor (1994)
• Interview with the Vampire (1994)
• Legends of the Fall (1994)
• Seven (1995)
• 12 Monkeys (1995)
• Sleepers (1996)
• The Devil's Own (1997)
• Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
• Meet Joe Black (1998)
• Fight Club (1999)
• Being John Malkovich (1999)
• Snatch (2000)
• The Mexican (2001)
• Spy Game (2001)
• Ocean's Eleven (2001)
• Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
• Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
• Troy (2004)
• Ocean's Twelve (2004)
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
• Babel (2006)
• God Grew Tired of Us (2006)
• The Departed (2006)
• Running with Scissors (2006)
• Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
• The Tehuacan Project (2007)
• Year of the Dog (2007)
• A Mighty Heart (2007)
• Burn After Reading (2008)
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
• Inglourious Basterds (2009)
• The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
• The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
• Megamind (2010)
• Kick-Ass (2010)
• Eat Pray Love (2010)
• The Tree of Life (2011)
• Moneyball (2011)
• Happy Feet Two (2011)
• Killing Them Softly (2012)
• World War Z (2013)
• 12 Years a Slave (2013)
• The Counselor (2013)
• Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
• Fury (2014)
• True Story (2014)
• The Normal Heart (2014)
• Selma (2014)
• True Story (2015)
• The Audition (2015)
• By the Sea (2015)
• Hitting the Apex (2015)
• The Big Short (2015)
• Voyage of Time (2016)
• Allied (2016)
• The Lost City of Z (2017)
• War Machine (2017)

Quotations

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When you see a person, do you just concentrate on their looks? It's just a first impression. Then there's someone who doesn't catch your eye immediately, but you talk to them and they become the most beautiful thing in the world. The greatest actors aren't what you would call beautiful sex symbols.

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In Missouri, where I come from, we don't talk about what we do - we just do it. If we talk about it, it's seen as bragging.

* * *

I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends, and I have my family, and I haven't known life to be any happier.

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I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.

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Success is a beast. And it actually puts the emphasis on the wrong thing. You get away with more instead of looking within.

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Being married means I can break wind and eat ice cream in bed.

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You must lose everything in order to gain anything.

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How many stories have you read that aren't true, stories about me and Angie being married or fighting or splitting up? And when we don't split up, there's a whole new round that we've made up and we're back together again!

* * *

I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.

* * *

What's valuable to me has become clearer as I've got older. To me, it's about the value of your time and your day and the value of the people you spend it with.

* * *

When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance.

* * *

I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from.

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I'm drawn to furniture design as complete architecture on a minor scale.

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You never know when I might decide to work in a Bollywood film and do one of those dance numbers with the whole crew in the backdrop.

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I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film.

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Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.

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I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to Heaven then?'

* * *

I'm much more experienced now, so I can find films that are interesting quicker and cut out the films that don't really matter. It means more to me now because my kids are going to see them, and I want them to be proud.

* * *

I know when I go outside, there'll be a van or two and they'll probably follow us four out of seven days a week, trying to get something. But I'm just going across town and I know they're just wasting their day, so it doesn't bother me anymore.

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