TOKYO: Even though he was dressed ruggedly from head to toe — his newspaper boy hat down to the worn out shoes — Brad Pitt couldn’t get any dreamier at age 55.
To be sure, his entrance was still grand even with such a regular look, driving home the fact that we were about to have a chat Hollywood’s undisputed golden boy.
Doing press for his new movie “Ad Astra,” which he co-produces with 20th Century Fox, what we loved about interviewing Brad is how his gorgeous looks equally match his wit. He is profound and sensible at the same time, not only when choosing his movie projects but in his overall outlook in life.
We were lucky because even if he was absolutely jet-lagged from flying all around the world, his mood was also a hundred percent playful and engaged.
From the one-on-one interview to the red carpet, he was just —well — golden indeed. In fact, he even called out our name during the premiere. “MJ!” You can imagine just how giddy we were!
Category: BP Press
New York Times
“Faster alone, further together,” Brad Pitt murmured. Over his left shoulder hung Mars, reddish-brown and heartbreakingly small, while to his right, the much grander Jupiter was lit up like a disco ball.
We were seated opposite each other on the lowest level of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, inhabiting a closed-off exhibition called “Depths of Space,” mulling stoic men. Pitt has played his fair share of them in the movies, including two characters just this year: Cliff Booth, the bemused stunt man who sauntered through the summer hit “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” and Roy McBride, an astronaut shuttled to lonelier, ever more remote outposts of the galaxy in the coming “Ad Astra.”
Movie stars have their specialties, and while Pitt has proved that he can play a motormouth in films like “12 Monkeys” and “Snatch,” he’s at his most alluring when he’s holding something in reserve. It feels like you’re watching a man who says no more than he needs to, which is a major feat for someone who has starred in two films from the notoriously loquacious Quentin Tarantino.
“I grew up with that be-capable, be-strong, don’t-show-weakness thing,” Pitt told me. He was raised in Springfield, Mo., the eldest of three children, his father the owner of a trucking company. Now, at 55, he’s reached a point where he sees his dad in every performance he gives. “In some ways, I’m copying him,” Pitt said. “He had grown up in extreme hardship and poverty, always dead set on giving me a better life than he had — and he did it. But he came from that stoic ilk.”
• x004 New York Times
BP Gallery Update
• x007 July 22 – Once Upon a Time – Hollywood, CA
• x030 July 30 – Once Upon a Time – London, England
• x008 August 01 – Once Upon a Time – Berlin, Germany
• x011 July 30 – Once Upon a Time (Photocall) – London, England
• x005 August 01 – Once Upon a Time – (Photocall) Berlin, Germany
• x001 The Sunday Times (UK)
• x002 Photoshoots – Set 247
Thanks also to Shann.
Be sure to check out the latest interview updates to BP Press: The Irish Times & The Sunday Times.
GQ Australia
“Hold on,” says Pitt. We’re speaking over the phone, as he makes his way home in LA and some guy – a guy who’s about to have a story he can dine out on for years – is blocking traffic.
“What are you doing?” asks Pitt, giving the horn a couple of short pumps. Then two more, longer this time.
“Oh you know, I’m just taking care of business,” he says, when we ask what the reaction is to Brad Pitt honking someone on a sunny LA afternoon. “But he might have a story that Brad Pitt just honked at him, and said to get the fuck out of the way.”
Pitt is a star in a way that few Hollywood actors are. Not just famous but such a part of the culture that it feels surreal anyone could cross paths with him in the regular world of supermarkets and grocery aisles, or even on the road. He’s a star in the way they used to make them in Hollywood.
• x007 GQ Australia
Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio Talk Tarantino, Stardom and What Might Have Been
CANNES, France — On Tuesday, Quentin Tarantino returned with a bang and much critical love to the Cannes Film Festival with “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” his finest in years. A dream of a movie, it follows a handful of Hollywood types living in smoggy, starry Los Angeles in 1969, the year the Manson family went on a frenzied murder spree. Among the victims was the actress Sharon Tate, then married to Roman Polanski. In Tarantino’s Hollywoodland, Tate and Polanski live next door to Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a struggling, self-doubting TV actor. His best friend is Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a stuntman whose glory days are probably behind him. Rick could be another Clint Eastwood; Cliff should have been another Steve McQueen.
On Wednesday afternoon, I sat down for a brief chat with Pitt and DiCaprio in a suite at the Carlton Hotel, one of the grand hotels overlooking the Mediterranean. The two were in the midst of a massive publicity operation that day, giving interview after interview. Presenting a movie at Cannes can be big business and the army of Sony Pictures employees handling this offensive had the air of people worried about fumbling the most delicate of rarities. Their famous charges, by contrast, seemed wholly relaxed. Each man was affable, direct and seemed happy to talk, but, then, they have been in the business a long time. They know how to do this.
