Brad Pitt

Biography

William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 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. As a public figure, Pitt has been cited as one of the most powerful and influential people in the American entertainment industry.

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), and the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994). 

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 by 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.

For many years, he was cited as the world's most attractive man by various media outlets, and 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.

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 Mitchell (born 1966) and Julie Neal (born 1969). 

Born into a conservative Christian household, he was raised as Southern Baptist and later “oscillate 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.