On September 19, the most beautiful union in Hollywood broke up — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt filed for divorce. This marriage seemed perfect — 12 years together, six children (three relatives and three adopted). The actor told us in an interview about what life with Jolie taught him, why he is afraid of death, and what a person who wakes up famous feels like.
He was supposed to arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel 30 minutes ago. His bodyguards calculated the route, studied the passage through the basement and gave instructions to the hotel employees. I was also instructed for our meeting in the hotel room. From here, from the 12th floor, a beautiful view of Los Angeles opens up … A muffled voice behind me brings me out of contemplation. It belongs to a tall, obviously very strong man. He is dressed in a leather motorcycle suit, his face is not visible — a helmet and pilot’s goggles.
«Do you know what it’s like to be Brad Pitt?» the man asks from the threshold, unfastening his helmet. And he answers himself: “It is to walk from the front door only when there is a red carpet in front of it, and photographers and the crowd are on the sides. It’s knowing all the back doors and staff elevators and squeezing into the corner when the maid rolls her cart into the elevator. After all, it’s taking off a motorcycle helmet after having already missed the entire hotel lobby and 15 floors in the elevator!” “Really stupid,” I agree. And Pitt smiles his famous childish, disarming smile and continues: “I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just explaining why I’m wearing a helmet. No, don’t think that I walk the streets like that. I drive. On a motorcycle. You know, it’s such a joy of liberation — you are standing at a traffic light next to someone’s car, you hear what they are listening to on the radio. And under the helmet, you can be yourself.”
But it’s hard to imagine that this restrained man with an open smile will never be himself. It is impossible to imagine that he can lie, play up. Maybe it was this — such an organic, physiological — truthfulness, coupled with the talent to convey the most complex feelings, that made him a star? And not at all appearance, charisma and charm?
The actor told us about this and much more in 2009.
Psychologies: Always in plain sight, under the cameras, under the cries of the paparazzi… Is it possible to live like this?
Brad Pitt: Well… (Deep pause.) No, you can’t live like that. I have been 20 years, probably, I can not completely relax. I can’t go out on my lawn — as any American can — in shorts. I can’t go to the park with my kids. I can’t say too much. I practically lost the habit of being alone with myself. I constantly have to make sure that the attention of the tabloids does not deform something fundamental in me. But it has already deformed: I live with a feeling of hatred.
I hate those who, in twenty cars, in shifts, equipped with the most high-tech equipment, hunt me down from behind my own fence, who shout out the names of my children so that they look into their cameras … All this deforms so much that my dream has now become an ordinary person on a hot day, in line at the ice cream truck and discussing with the children for a long time who should buy what … But, oddly enough, now is the most joyful period of my life. I never thought that life would be so complete. How lucky I am to have such a family!
That is, for you, six children is not an additional restriction.
BP: Is it the limits of life? How much sleep do you get and can you go to another party? The point is not to limit yourself. Life can be organized in a new way, well, it can be changed decisively, which I did. But that inner freedom that I had when an unconditional meaning appeared in my life … I have never been so free. This meaning of life cannot be communicated by any cinema, in general, by any creativity. “Since childhood, people liked me, what is called a lovely child.”
The family should become for a person the safest place in the world, free from worries.
Before meeting Angie (Angelina Jolie, Pitt’s girlfriend and mother of his children. — Ed.), I clearly felt: yes, my life was successful — I played in several really good films, I had feelings … But I was so tired of myself! All my attention was involuntarily focused on myself — there was no one else in my life. And at 40, you have to give yourself away, not take. Share, not hoard. And of course, yes — children are in a sense a consequence of my egoism. Now I know for sure: the life that has already taken shape does not slip through your fingers, someone else needs it. A strange, but inconceivably pleasant feeling of freedom — freedom from yourself, when you can think of yourself not in the first place.
You have dramatically changed life — from a free favorite of the public to the father of a large family. Was it not scary?
BP: You know, I’m only afraid of death. And I felt it acutely when Angie’s mother recently died. Someday we’ll all be apart. With children, with those we love. Indeed, I am scared to death of death. But life — no, I’m not afraid. You can’t even imagine how organically you enter this new phase of life, into fatherhood. This happens not rationally, on intuition! It turns out that you have a lot of possibilities hidden in you.
For example, you can rejoice at the spitting up of your child, consider it the most, perhaps, important thing in life! Or sometimes you listen, as if from the outside, to your conversation with the children, you hear yourself and think: what a moron! And sometimes you just marvel at your own wisdom. And then, children create new opportunities for your own life. I learned how to deal with the press somehow — somehow! – thanks to them.
Is that when you sold pictures of your newborn twins to magazines and donated $14 million to charity?
BP: Yes, and this. It was the children who gave me the idea that we should stop running from the tabloids, and direct their energy to peaceful purposes. And now I inform them that I am going to New Orleans, where we started a project to build cheap and environmentally friendly housing for the victims of Katrina, or South Africa, where hundreds of thousands of children were left without parents because of AIDS, or in Darfur. And so I drag them there. And they are filming not only me, but everything that the world should see and know — about orphans, genocide, the homeless.
When you became a father, did you learn something from your parents?
BP: I am doing my best. I have amazing parents. We have lived our whole lives in the same place, in the same house. They say they don’t need more. They have friends with whom they have been friends all their lives, from school. They are faithful people. And parental fidelity gives the child confidence, right? My childhood, and that of my brother and sister, was marked by this confidence in the inviolability of our life, in the fact that if something bad happens, it will certainly be overcome. For my father, our stability has always been a priority, and not its material side.
Where I grew up, alcoholism, drugs were signs of weakness. And here, in Los Angeles, it turned out to be almost the norm. I had to learn not to judge anyone
Dad says money is not a necessity, it’s like a fire extinguisher in a house, it’s for safety. The first necessity for him is trust in each other. And my mother always thought: the main thing that she should give us is herself, her time. She always put us to bed herself and talked to us before bed as much as we wanted. I try to look at the family from their father’s and mother’s positions: the family should become for a person the safest place in the world, free from worries.
You grew up in the heart of America — with its conservatism, the Ku Klux Klan past … Did it leave an imprint on you?
BP: Yes, when I got to the big city, Los Angeles, I even found it funny: in America there are African Americans, like, say, Denzel Washington, there are Irish Americans, like Sean Penn, there are Jewish Americans, like Michael Douglas. And I’m so, nothing interesting — American-American. The faith is really strong there, we had a pretty strict Baptist family. Sundays to church. Before dinner — a prayer … Faith — the first thing I began to doubt. Because he began to doubt divine justice.
Even in kindergarten, I thought: what, everything will be the same with me in heaven as with Protestants, as with Catholics? I have always been interested in the possibility of injustice. Everyone was very disposed towards me, people liked me from childhood, I was, as they say, a lovely child. Others liked less, and I noticed it. And in the evenings he tormented my mother with questions, the main of which was, of course, “why?”. And she told me: the fact that people like you means additional opportunities and additional responsibility. Only. But a sense of guilt settled in me, which is ridiculous, because of the unfair world order.
And then religion completely ceased to suit me — because of the dogma that prescribes what is possible and what is not. And this is dangerous — any prescription. Life consists of differences, everything has the right to life. The mentality of the ancient Greeks is closer to me: they knew what the turns of the wheel of fortune were, ups and downs. They have a deeper understanding of the very nature of man, his nature. For them, nature is primary.
Don’t you yourself try to be good, kind?
BP: Trying is one thing, but believing you have no right to be yourself is another. I am me. And I’m different. I try, of course, to be kinder, more tolerant, but in essence, and not to seem better than I am.
The conflict with the principles by which they lived in Missouri, and made you leave the university, leave home?
BP: Not in the first place. When there were two weeks left before graduation, all my university friends were already seriously talking about future careers, about work. And I just did not see this my future life. I did not see myself in the office, in the newspaper. And I decided that I needed to try something new. Move to the big city, see another life. I’ve always liked cinema. From cinema I learned about the world, cinema was a window to the big world. But we didn’t make movies in Missouri. And I decided: if the cinema does not go to me, I will go to him. And went.
And what was the meeting with another life?
BP: In a way, it was a shock. Where I grew up, alcoholism, drugs, generally so-called bad behavior were signs of weakness. And everyone was terribly afraid of appearing weak. And here, in Los Angeles, the previously unacceptable turned out to be almost the norm. I had to learn not to judge anyone.
I had to dance in a chicken costume in front of fast food — so I learned in practice what advertising is, which I studied for four years at university
In addition, money has become a problem. I had to dance in a chicken costume in front of fast food to attract the public — this is how I learned in practice what advertising is, which I studied for four years at university. And then for a long time he drove strippers to bachelor parties. He brought, put on music, then waited for the end of the dance, grabbed them in an armful along with clothes, took money from clients and … drove them to the next party. Girls from small towns, sometimes just from farms, in a big ruthless city … So sorry for them! Maybe because I myself was the same — a poor provincial in the City of Success. For the first six months, he slept on the floor, in an apartment with friends. He went to acting classes and to auditions for acting agencies, but not on his own, but as a partner of his classmates.
What turned out to be the most difficult?
BP: I remember one agency sent me to a screen test. After some time, I called to find out the result. Instead of an agent, his assistant came up to the phone and answered my question with a question: “Have you thought about acting courses?” … I felt like a complete nonentity. But the real feeling of hopelessness visited me later — when I became what is called a Hollywood star. I wasn’t ready for this… attention storm. And I felt like… You know, we have such a bad sexist tradition among the builders in the American outback — to whistle and shout obscenities to lonely girls passing by. So, I felt like a girl walking alone, not just past, but along the construction site itself. Then I decided: as soon as the image has earned, it is urgent to destroy it. For example, he was such a sweet little thing in «Thelma and Louise» — urgently play a wild lunatic in «12 Monkeys.» Etc.
You once said that you can’t stand questions like, «What do you think China should do about Tibet?» and you don’t understand why they are asked simply by an actor. Now that philanthropy and political activism have become such a big part of your life, it’s hard to believe you ever said that.
BP: Yes, my position is completely different now. And I believe that we are capable of changing circumstances. But I still don’t believe in the benefit of expressing opinions in the news: it’s all empty, it doesn’t change the world. The world is changing action. I act. And I believe in action. Therefore, he began to bring life in line with his principles. For example, quit smoking. I smoked for a quarter of a century, and now I quit because I want to be with my children longer. And Angie and I decided not to officially marry until everyone in the country has equal rights to marry — this is how we support the gay movement for their right to marry.
Life with Angie taught me a lot. She is a very direct person, not a penny puts tact, if the truth is really required. With her, I began to understand: life is one — both in the sense that it is the only one, and in the sense that it is one, it cannot be divided into parts — here I am in the family, here in the office, and here at a party. It is now obvious to me that everything in life is indissolubly connected. I am known and therefore I can help. I help, and it expands my world, my horizons. This is all healthy egoism, which you understand only after forty, — to use the world for your own purposes, the main of which is to be useful to the world.