USA Today

WASHINGTON – Brad Pitt leans back and relaxes in a Georgetown hotel chair a mile and a half from the White House, though he’s light-years away from worrying about presidential tweets.

It’s been three days since the 55-year-old actor told a French newspaper that President Donald Trump represented a “much bigger threat” on “more serious issues” than tariffs on the French vineyard Pitt owns with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

No angry social-media missives have been thrown his way yet, though, and “truthfully, I don’t even think about it. It probably says I’m doing something wrong,” says Pitt, brandishing his signature grin.

This mind-set is in line with the overall Tao of Brad: The star of the space adventure “Ad Astra” (in theaters Friday) is self-effacing and thoughtful, kind and cool, philosophical yet also guarded.

In recent years in the public eye, Pitt has navigated a two-year divorce and got sober. He’s also found two of his most memorable characters onscreen: The enigmatic and easygoing 1960s stuntman Cliff Booth in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” – which has Pitt in line for his fourth Oscar acting nomination – and stoic, introspective “Ad Astra” astronaut Roy McBride, who blasts off into the cosmos seeking his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones).

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