A twice Golden Globe winner with six nominations, Brad Pitt stars as a trained killer in the action/comedy Bullet Train, opening this week.
Pitt spoke to the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press during several interviews between 1992 and 2004 about working with Robert Redford as a director on A River Runs Through It and as a fellow actor in Spy Game (2001) by Tony Scott, about the actors that he most admired growing up and other directors he worked with.
The first time HFPA journalists interviewed Brad Pitt was in February 1992, after his breakout role in Thelma & Louise directed by Ridley Scott, when he had already completed shooting A River Runs Through It, from the 1976 novella by Norman Maclean. He spoke about the actors he admired growing up: “I remember that Robert Redford and Paul Newman were big in my family, my dad was a fan of them, because of the kind of movies they stood for, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), about one man against the system, standing up for his principles. So they were actors that you respected. But I remember movies more specifically than people, films like Midnight Cowboy (1969) with Dustin Hoffman, Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) with Al Pacino. These films meant something to me.”
Category: BP Press
Brad Pitt says retirement still a long way off
Brad Pitt scotched talk of imminent retirement as he travelled to Paris for the premiere of his Jackie Chan-inspired action caper “Bullet Train”.
The 58-year-old had worried fans that his acting days may be numbered after a GQ interview last month in which he said he was in the “last semester” of his career.
But Pitt told AFP: “I’m not getting out by any means.
“It seems that might have been taken as a statement of retirement. That’s not what I was saying,” he said.
“I’m over that hump of middle age and so I’m looking at that last leg… how do I want to spend that time? At my age, you’ve made enough mistakes… now there’s a comfort in applying that kind of wisdom.”
Read more. Now the ridiculous media can stop abusing and misinterpreting his quote. This article has also been added to BP Press.
GQ – Brad Pitt Opens Up His Dream World
We know him as a legendary leading man, a Hollywood power broker, maybe the greatest heartthrob of all time. But Brad Pitt isn’t attached to any of those old conceptions. And, as Ottessa Moshfegh discovers, his ambitions for the rest of his life are more mystical than we ever could have imagined.
Brad Pitt tries to remember his dreams. He keeps pen and paper on his bedside table and records everything he can recall when he wakes up in the morning. “I’ve found that to be really helpful,” he says. “I’m curious what’s going on in there when I’m not at the helm.” He tells me this one recent afternoon in the brightness of his living room, at his Craftsman home in the Hollywood Hills. For a long while, his sleep had been haunted by a particularly persistent and violent dream—the particulars of which he later describes for me in an email exchange.
Read more. Or at our BP Press archive for a smooth read. GQ is for sale June 28th!
Check out the behind the scenes exclusive videoclip at GQ.com!
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Gwyneth and Brad Pitt: On Bruce Paltrow and the Cashmere Shirt That Inspired a Business
If you’ve browsed our Father’s Day gift guide, you might recognize the shirt in the photo above. It’s from a new-to-the-goop-shop brand called God’s True Cashmere, which comes highly recommended to us (well, to Gwyneth) by Brad Pitt. Below, we interview the founder, and GP talks to Brad about his involvement in the business, his love of the late Bruce Paltrow, and more.
For holistic healer–turned–Brad Pitt’s business partner Sat Hari Khalsa, the journey to entrepreneurship was, in her own words, divinely driven. “In October 2018, I had a dream where Brad was telling me that he wanted more softness in his life, more green cashmere,” Sat Hari says. Coincidentally, Pitt had said that exact thing to his stylist just two days prior.
Inspired by this vision, Sat Hari set out to make her friend a cashmere button-up based on one she had been given by a client almost a decade earlier. “I knew that these shirts existed, but they weren’t exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t find them again,” she says. “So I called around to all the different fashion houses to see if somebody could make a cashmere shirt in time for Christmas, and everyone basically said no.”
• x01 God’s True Cashmere – Photoshoot
David Leitch On Directing Action In A Confined Space: ‘It Forces You To Be Creative’
If there’s one thing we’ve come to expect from David Leitch, former Brad Pitt stunt double, director of Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 and major contributor to John Wick, it’s impeccable on-screen action.
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“I’m not gonna say that it was without its challenges,” Leitch tells Empire. “I think there’s an expectation with summer movies that you have a certain level of action and spectacle. How do you create that in this confined space? It just forces you to be creative.” Where the John Wick franchise has given us ‘gun fu’, ‘book fu’ and even ‘horse fu’, Bullet Train embraces the use of everyday objects in its fight scenes – expect variations on ‘kettle fu’, ‘laptop fu’, and even ‘water bottle fu’.
There was also room to mix things up in the carriages themselves: there are 16 in total, including one dedicated to a fictional anime character, ‘Momomon’, and, of course, the quiet carriage. “That adds a whole other flexibility to the choreography,” says Leach. Brian Tyree Henry, who plays English hitman and Thomas The Tank Engine lover Lemon, enjoyed shooting that one in particular. “The fact that I have a whole fight with Brad Pitt on a quiet car — that we are trying to be silent while bashing each other’s faces — that was so fun to play,” he says. “You’re like a kid in a candy store.”
That blend of intricate hand-to-hand combat with a more comedic tone brings one of cinema’s most prolific martial arts masters to mind: “It straddles a line of badass action, but with a humorous element infused in it,” Pitt explains. “Almost like Jackie Chan. I feel like it is in that slipstream.” Director Leitch agrees: “Jackie is always an inspiration.” Just as Chan is renowned for doing the majority of his own stunts, so did Pitt on Bullet Train, which undoubtedly led to some bruises. “You always get banged up a little bit,” Pitt says. “We’re padded pretty well. Some of the tougher guys go without pads. I am not that guy.”
Read more. This interview also involves Brad. Empire issue august is out now.