Brad Pitt is recognized world-wide for his amazing acting on the big screen and his classic, suave style. Not only that, but he is the spouse of the beautiful actress, director and UN humanitarian, Angelina Jolie, and the father to multiple beautiful children.

When it comes to style, his taste in fashion has changed over the years – from trendy to edgy to rugged and everything in between – but he continues to surprise us and inspire us. In fact, an essential part of his look that is often overlooked is his choice of accessories – particularly his sunglasses.

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The origin story of the collection of angular, brightly painted homes called Make It Right has become a piece of New Orleans lore. The Lower 9th Ward neighborhood near the Claiborne Avenue bridge was more or less wiped out by floodwater surging through a gap in the levee wall in 2005. Then, as if by Hollywood magic, Brad Pitt appeared to attempt to rebuild it. At the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the flood, 109 homes stand where there once was only mud and wreckage. More homes are on the way.

“I’ll tell you, every time I drive over the Claiborne bridge, no matter what frustration I might be dealing with at the moment, I get this well of pride when I see this little oasis of color and the solar panels,” Pitt said in a telephone conversation Friday (Aug. 15) from Los Angeles.

An ecologist, architecture enthusiast and part-time New Orleans resident, Pitt called on the top building designers of the region, nation and world to draw up houses with striking appearances that married advanced environmental practices with affordable building methods. He also founded a nonprofit organization to see that those design gems rose on the empty landscape.

“I drive into the neighborhood and I see people on their porch,” Pitt said, “and I ask them how is their house treating them? And they say, ‘Good.’ And I say what’s your utility bill? And they’ll throw something out like, ’24 bucks’ or something, and I feel fantastic. It’s a reminder of why we’re there. It’s a reminder of why we push like we push. It makes it all worthwhile.”

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Actor Brad Pitt didn’t have much experience with financing forgivable loans when he built his first home in the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Lower 9th Ward in 2008.

But seven years later, Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation has gained worldwide attention for the eye-catching home designs and “green” building features — such as solar panels and rainwater collectors — that it has incorporated into a growing development for low-income residents seeking to return to the neighborhood.

“I walked into it blind, just thinking, ‘People need homes; I know people who make great homes. Let’s solve this problem of the inequality and low-income housing in a place that’s been ravaged by the environment,’ ” the 51-year-old Pitt said Friday in a telephone interview.

Although Pitt and his wife, actress Angelina Jolie, put their French Quarter mansion on the market earlier this year, he said they’re not planning to leave the city for good and may buy another home in time.

A decade after Katrina’s floodwaters destroyed more than 5,300 homes in a neighborhood once known for having the highest rate of black home ownership in New Orleans, Pitt’s efforts have paid off: His foundation has spent $26.8 million to build 109 homes in a 20-block area.

In part because of his efforts, the neighborhood has managed to bounce back somewhat, though slowly. It now has about 37 percent of its population before the storm — a lower figure than most other devastated parts of the city.

Though he said there’s still work to do, Pitt considers the Make It Right development to be an example of how to rebuild in a neighborhood that some city and federal officials had suggested should not be rebuilt at all in the storm’s aftermath.

He called it “an oasis of color, an … oasis of how to build with dignity for low-income housing, and I see it as a template for how we can build our cities and certainly our neighborhoods in other areas in the future.”

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Scoot McNairy has been set to join Brad Pitt in Netflix’s war-on-terror-themed black comedy War Machine. Last seen in Gone Girl, McNairy reunites here with Pitt and his Plan B partners after he worked with them on Killing Them Softly and 12 Years A Slave. He worked with War Machine helmer David Michod on The Rover.

The film is based on the Michael Hastings book The Operators: The Wild And Terrifying Inside Story Of America’s War In Afghanistan and satirizes the handling of that war, and the people running it. Michod wrote the script and Pitt produces with Plan B partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, in association with Ian Bryce.

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Would you expect anything less than arresting beauty from a film starring Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt? But the actress, who also wrote and directed this film about an estranged married couple struggling with grief, says that setting By the Sea in the 1970s wasn’t without its aesthetic challenges. “It makes me happy when people say the movie looks period but also beautiful,” she says. “I was little in the ’70s, and to see our old pictures, well…” She laughs. “It was not great.”

Filming took place in Malta last August, with the quiet island of Goza standing in for seaside France. Cinematographer Christian Berger (The White Ribbon) kept the look of the production as realistic as possible. “It’s all natural light so it doesn’t feel artificial,” Jolie Pitt says. “When we did scenes, we didn’t have big lighting setups in our face for close-ups.” That stripped-down intimacy helped with some of the film’s heavier moments. “We watch this couple go off the track and we wait to see if it gets more unhealthy, or if they will recover,” she says. “I think too often people go through very painful transformative experiences and they don’t stay together. They abandon each other.”

The reverse was true for the newly wedded stars — who worked on the film during their honeymoon — though it certainly wasn’t without its darker moments. “It was an emotionally charged set,” Jolie Pitt says. “Even though the characters are very different from us, when you act you still express real emotion.” Luckily, the couple’s six kids were on hand to ground them. “It’s impossible to bring your work home with you when you have to snap out of it for your children,” she says. “It wasn’t easy for either of us, but when we walked away, we were closer than we had been.”

Read more. Thanks Yukko for the pictures!

Topher Grace has been set to play Brad Pitt’s wingman in Netflix’s war-on-terror-themed black comedy War Machine. The film is based on Michael Hastings’ best-selling nonfiction book The Operators: The Wild And Terrifying Inside Story Of America’s War In Afghanistan and satirizes the handling of that war, and the people running it. Pitt stars as a four-star rock star U.S. general patterned after Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and Grace has been set to play his civilian press adviser. David Michod wrote and directed, and Pitt produces with Plan B partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, in association with Ian Bryce.

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The Graveyard of Empires has a new plot, as Not Fade Away‘s John Magaro has signed on to Netflix’s Plan B-produced black comedy War Machine. Based on Michael Hasting’s best selling nonfiction book The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan, the film takes a satirical look at America’s decade-plus long military effort in the war-torn nation and the continent-sized egos of the people running it. Magaro will play Cory Burger, a special ops soldier and close advisor to General McMahon (Brad Pitt), the film’s stand-in for General Stanley McChrystal. Written and directed by David Michod, Pitt produces along with Plan B partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, in association with Ian Bryce.

Magaro was recently seen in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, and on Orange Is The New Black. He’ll next be seen this November in TWC’s Carol, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Rooney Mara, Disney’s The Finest Hours, directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Casey Affleck, and Paramount’s The Big Short, from director Adam McKay, aslo starring Brad Pitt, along with Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell.

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