He didn't say exactly when, or what movie, marked this transition, but you can ballpark it. I hit this point in the late '90s or early 2000s, where I realized I was chasing these interesting, yet I was failing to live as interesting a life as I thought I could.” “Leo and I were having this conversation the other day. Mostly, he said, he just says no to stuff. And I couldn't step into that role.” But: “I want to do the same thing on my end.” When I watch Bale or Hardy, I can't do what they do. “Well, it's about bringing my personal experience, my personal humor, my personal, um, embarrassments, and my personal pains. “It's been my question the last 15 years: ‘If I'm gonna do the role, what can I bring to it that someone else can't?’ ” Pitt will acknowledge that these choices have become increasingly personal as his career has gone on.
#BRAD COMING OUT ON TOP MOVIE#
Perhaps because of how infrequently Pitt stars in a movie these days, it's tempting to try to figure out what in Once Upon a Time… or Ad Astra drew him off the sidelines and back to acting. Then laughed the wolfish, rueful laugh that he has been laughing in movies for more than 30 years now. Here he smiled the wolfish, rueful grin that he has been smiling in movies for more than 30 years now. “I'm going down,” Pitt said, trying to regain his balance. So he'd relocated to a wooden chair, and then he started leaning back in the chair, and then the chair started squeaking and almost gave way. “You know those roadside motels, in the desert?” he said, gesturing at the bedspread. He'd already tried to lie down on the bed in the poolhouse, he told me, only to encounter an unsettlingly musty smell. In Hollywood he's increasingly become more of a producer and power broker, through his company Plan B Entertainment, than an onscreen presence.
![brad coming out on top brad coming out on top](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K_UgELqZYi8/maxresdefault.jpg)
He hasn't made a big deal about this-just gradually receded into his own life and pursuits, which in the past few years have been turbulent and included a spectacularly public divorce. Because he doesn't actually act much anymore. All of a sudden, people were remembering the existence of Brad Pitt-the great movie star, maybe our greatest, in not one but two movies, reminding everyone just how good he is at this when he bothers to do it. Pitt was also watching the final cuts of a film called Ad Astra, directed by James Gray, that was due in theaters in September.
![brad coming out on top brad coming out on top](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gAtgrNrB9fc/sddefault.jpg)
Just yesterday the Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, which Pitt stars in opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, opened in New York and Los Angeles. Towel, $28, by Land's End / Sunglasses, $150, vintage Ray-Ban from RTH