For the first time since his shocking split from Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt is back on the big screen this year in both Quentin Tarintino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and the sci-fi drama Ad Astra.
In a new interview, the 55-year-old is finally opening up about his life post-breakup, and he revealed that he went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a year-and-a-half after the split.
Pitt committed to Ad Astra just months after Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016. He says he used the “family stuff” he had going on to help him play the character of Roy McBride, who is an astronaut in search of his father. Director James Gray says Pitt “definitely used the stimuli from his life,” and he “investigated the essence of the character through himself.”
When speaking about his time on set, Pitt told The New York Times that we all carry pain, grief, and loss and we spend most of our time hiding it. However, it’s there, and you have to “open up those boxes.” Pitt says that when preparing for his role on Ad Astra, he thought a lot about his own dad who taught him to always be strong and capable and to never show weakness. And in some ways, Pitt says he copies his father.
In addition to working out some of his issues during his time on the Ad Astra set, Pitt also attended AA meetings because he had taken things as far as he could take them, so he had to remove his “drinking privileges.”
“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard,” said Pitt. “It was this safe space where there was little j*udgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself. It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself. There’s great value in that.”
Pitt says that when he reached a level of mind-boggling fame in the 1990s it was uncomfortable for him because of the “cacophony of expectations and judgments.” He admits that he became a hermit and just “bonged” himself “into oblivion.” His life has not been “the lottery it appeared from the outside,” says Pitt.
As for his future in the entertainment business, Pitt says that his roles will become fewer and farther between. He explained that he has other things he wants to do now, and when you feel like you’ve finally got your arms around something, then it’s time to wrap your arms around something else.
Ad Astra hits theaters nationwide on September 20th.
Brad Pitt at Venice Film Festival, 2019 pic.twitter.com/b5quYahZRk
— l'art imite la vie. (@Iohlita) September 3, 2019