Hollywood star Brad Pitt, 62, has opened up about a wide range of subjects, from his career and growing older to family struggles, his history with alcohol and the impact of artificial intelligence on the film industry. Reflecting on some of the most difficult periods of his life, Pitt said that letting go of the need for control and accepting things as they are can be part of the healing process.
In an extensive interview ahead of the release of his new film Heart of the Beast, Pitt discussed his career in Hollywood, personal loss, family difficulties, aging and the ways in which the film industry could change in the years ahead.
The 62-year-old actor spoke candidly about grief and loss, subjects that have become increasingly significant in his life in recent years.
Describing himself as a “congenital optimist,” Pitt said there was a period in his life when overwhelming emotional pain left him unable to see a way forward. But his survival instinct eventually took over, he said, giving him a different understanding of what pain can do to a person.
“By the fifth year, you start breathing again”
One of the most poignant moments in the interview came after the journalist told Pitt about the death of his brother.
Drawing on his own experiences, Pitt reflected on how grief changes over time.
“Grief is probably the most leveling of all emotions,” he said, describing loss as one of the most profound experiences a person can endure and the loneliness that can follow as one of its most difficult consequences.
“You’re on year five,” Pitt told the journalist. “Year five, you just start breathing again.”
His comments also reflected losses in his own life. Pitt said his mother died last year and that he remains in regular contact with his father, with whom he talks about the woman who is no longer there.
“Family stuff”
Pitt declined to go into detail about his lengthy divorce from Angelina Jolie or his relationship with their children.
But when discussing a particularly painful period in his life, he identified the source simply as “family stuff.”
When the journalist asked whether he was referring to his children, Pitt repeated the phrase without elaborating.
“Family stuff,” he said.
His relationship with Jolie and the difficulties surrounding his relationship with his children have remained in the public spotlight for years.
“I was sober for seven years, and then I got back off the wagon”
Pitt also spoke openly about his relationship with alcohol.
The actor said he had remained sober for seven years before returning to drinking, although he stressed that he now approaches alcohol in a much more restrained way.
Pitt said moderation has become important to him and that drinking too much can mean missing out on the following morning.
He said he has come to value mornings more, adding that there is little appeal in losing a good morning because of what happened the night before.
“God, I want my fifties back”
Pitt also reflected on getting older and on the passing of the generation of actors who came before him, including Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Paul Newman, Robert Duvall and Donald Sutherland.
He said the loss of those actors had created a sense that a protective generation had disappeared, leaving stars of his generation to become the “last stop.”
Pitt spoke particularly warmly about Redford, who directed him in the 1992 film A River Runs Through It and remained an important figure in his career.
“God, I want my fifties back,” Pitt said, arguing that people in their fifties should pursue the things on their minds with greater urgency.
During his fifties, Pitt starred in 11 films, produced 17 and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Now in his sixties, he appears determined to maintain the same pace.
A busy run of new films
Pitt described the past two and a half years as the longest continuous period of work of his career.
Following F1, he worked on Heart of the Beast. He then reunited with director David Fincher for a new film written by Quentin Tarantino, in which Pitt returns to his Oscar-winning role as Hollywood stuntman Cliff Booth from Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
He has also completed work on The Riders, a dark thriller scheduled for release next year.
Pitt said that at this stage of his career, he wants every role to offer him the opportunity to do something he has never done before as an actor, even if that means discovering something new in a single scene.
“AI is going to change filmmaking”
Artificial intelligence was another major topic of the interview.
Pitt believes AI could make it easier to produce mid-budget films, particularly by reducing the cost of visual effects. He suggested that movies with budgets in the $40 million to $90 million range could benefit from the technology and become more commercially viable.
He was more cautious, however, when discussing the possibility of AI replacing actors.
Pitt said he has long included provisions in his contracts regarding digital scans of his face and performances, and that he has traditionally required those scans to be destroyed after they were used.
He acknowledged that AI could potentially generate a new performance based on an actor’s previous work. But he questioned whether such a performance would reflect the real choices and discoveries made by the actor during the filmmaking process.
Pitt does not appear convinced that artificial intelligence can fully replicate human performance.
Recalling a recent concert, he argued that there is something fundamentally human about musicians performing together in front of a live audience.
“AI can’t do that,” he said.
“You have to go through the pain”
One of the central themes of Pitt’s conversation was how people deal with difficult periods in their lives.
Rather than viewing recovery as something that requires a person to simply “climb out” of suffering, Pitt said the process is about going through it.
He described healing as a matter of trying, failing, trying again and continuing even when a person reaches what feels like an impassable wall.
Pitt said that change does not necessarily arrive as a dramatic transformation. Sometimes, he suggested, it comes in small increments — a day when the world suddenly feels a little brighter and the air a little sweeter.
For Pitt, that realization is closely connected to acceptance.
“Maybe we’ve got to start with letting go of all control,” he said, suggesting that people can begin to heal by abandoning their expectations about how life should have unfolded or how things are supposed to be.
Pitt ultimately summed up what he has learned from loss and grief in a simple but powerful idea: grief can leave a gaping hole, but if you survive it, it can also leave behind a profound and painful beauty.
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