About:

William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 3, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. One of the most influential celebrities, Pitt appeared on Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list from 2006 to 2008, and the Time 100 list in 2007.

Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the Ridley Scott road film Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with the drama films A River Runs Through It (1992) and Legends of the Fall (1994). He also starred in the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), alongside Tom Cruise. He gave critically acclaimed performances in David Fincher’s crime thriller Seven (1995) and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys (1995). The latter earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and his first Academy Award nomination.

Pitt found greater commercial success starring in Steven Soderbergh’s heist film Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and reprised his role in its sequels. He cemented his leading man status starring in blockbusters such as the historical epic Troy (2004), the romantic crime film Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), the horror film World War Z (2013), and the action film Bullet Train (2022). Pitt also starred in the critically acclaimed films Fight Club (1999), Babel (2006), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Tree of Life (2011), and The Big Short (2015). Pitt received Academy Award nominations for his performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011), and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

In 2001, Pitt co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment. He produced The Departed (2006), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Moonlight (2016), all of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, while others such as The Tree of Life (2011), Moneyball (2011), Selma (2014), and The Big Short (2015) were nominated for the award. Pitt was named People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1995 and 2000. His personal life is the subject of wide publicity. He is divorced from actresses Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. Pitt has six children with Jolie, three of whom were adopted internationally.

Early Life

William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to William Alvin Pitt, the proprietor of a trucking company, and Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a school counselor. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he lived together with his younger siblings, Douglas Pitt (b. 1966) and Julie (née Pitt) Neal (b. 1969). Born into a conservative Christian household, he was raised as Southern Baptist and later “oscillate[d] between agnosticism and atheism.” He later reconciled his belief in spirituality. Pitt has described Springfield as “Mark Twain country, Jesse James country,” having grown up with “a lot of hills, a lot of lakes.”

Pitt attended Kickapoo High School, where he was a member of the golf, swimming, and tennis teams. He participated in the school’s Key and Forensics clubs, in school debates, and in musicals. Following his graduation from high school, Pitt enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1982, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. As graduation approached, Pitt did not feel ready to settle down. He loved films—”a portal into different worlds for me”—and, since films were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Two weeks short of completing the coursework for a degree, Pitt left the university and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting lessons and worked odd jobs. He has named Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke as his early acting heroes.

Career

Early Work (1987–1993)

While struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from acting coach Roy London. His acting career began in 1987, with uncredited parts in the films No Way Out (1987), No Man’s Land (1987) and Less than Zero (1987). In May 1987, he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World. In November of the same year, Pitt had a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains. He appeared in four episodes of the CBS primetime series Dallas between December 1987 and February 1988 as Randy, the boyfriend of Charlie Wade (played by Shalane McCall). Later in 1988, Pitt made a guest appearance on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street. In the same year, the Yugoslavian–U.S. co-production The Dark Side of the Sun (1988) was his first leading film role, starring as a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The film was shelved at the outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence and was not released until 1997. Pitt made two motion picture appearances in 1989: the first in a supporting role in the comedy Happy Together; the second a featured role in the horror film Cutting Class, the first of Pitt’s films to reach theaters. He made guest appearances on television series Head of the Class, Freddy’s Nightmares, Thirtysomething, and (for a second time) Growing Pains.

Pitt was cast as Billy Canton, a drug addict who takes advantage of a young runaway (played by Juliette Lewis) in the 1990 NBC television movie Too Young to Die?, the story of an abused teenager sentenced to death for a murder. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: “Pitt is a magnificent slimeball as her hoody boyfriend; looking and sounding like a malevolent John Cougar Mellencamp, he’s really scary.” The same year, Pitt co-starred in six episodes of the short-lived Fox drama Glory Days and took a supporting role in the HBO television film The Image. His next appearance came in the 1991 film Across the Tracks; Pitt portrayed Joe Maloney, a high school runner with a criminal brother, played by Rick Schroder. The same year he featured in a Levi’s jeans TV commercial based around the song “20th Century Boy” which played in the background.

After years of supporting roles in film and frequent television guest appearances, Pitt attracted wider recognition in his supporting role in Ridley Scott’s 1991 road film Thelma & Louise. He played J.D., a small-time criminal who befriends Thelma (Geena Davis). His love scene with Davis has been cited as the event that defined Pitt as a sex symbol. After Thelma & Louise, Pitt starred in the 1991 film Johnny Suede, a low-budget picture about an aspiring rock star, and the 1992 live-action/animated fantasy film Cool World, although neither furthered his career, having poor reviews and box office performance.

Pitt took on the role of Paul Maclean in the 1992 biographical film A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford. His portrayal of the character was described by People’s Janet Mock as a career-making performance, proving that Pitt could be more than a “cowboy-hatted hunk.” He has admitted to feeling under pressure when making the film and thought it was one of his “weakest performances … It’s so weird that it ended up being the one that I got the most attention for.” Pitt believed that he benefited from working with such a talented cast and crew. He compared working with Redford to playing tennis with a superior player, saying “when you play with somebody better than you, your game gets better.” In 1993, Pitt reunited with Juliette Lewis for the road film Kalifornia. He played Early Grayce, a serial killer and the abusive husband of Lewis’ character, in a performance described by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone as “outstanding, all boyish charm and then a snort that exudes pure menace.” Pitt also garnered attention for a brief appearance in the cult hit True Romance as a stoner named Floyd, providing comic relief to the action film. He capped the year by winning a ShoWest Award for Male Star of Tomorrow.

Breakthrough (1994–1998)

Pitt with Losang Thonden in Argentina on the set of Seven Years in Tibet in 1997
In 1994, Pitt portrayed the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the horror film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name. He was part of an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. Despite his winning two MTV Movie Awards at the 1995 ceremony, his performance was poorly received. According to the Dallas Observer, “