Brad Pitt Biography

Actor

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Name at birth: William Bradley Pitt

Brad Pitt is one of the leading movie heartthrobs of the 1990s and 2000s and the Oscar-nominated star of the David Fincher film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Pitt grew up in Missouri and studied journalism in college before dropping out to become an actor. He scored as the sexy scoundrel hitchhiker in the 1991 movie Thelma and Louise (with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon), a small role that nonetheless catapulted him to leading man status. Despite the golden glow of a leading man, Pitt quickly became known as a movie star who didn't always have to be the star. Pitt co-starred with Tom Cruise in Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire (1994), with Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys (1995) and with Harrison Ford in The Devil's Own (1997). As a leading man he appeared in Fincher's Se7en (1995, with Morgan Freeman), in Fincher's brutal urban psychodrama Fight Club (1999, with Edward Norton), and in Spy Game (2001, with Robert Redford). He's done ensemble comedy in Ocean's Eleven (2001, with George Clooney) and its sequels, and in the Coen brothers 2008 comedy Burn After Reading. And, of course, he's done big-budget star vehicles like Troy (2004, with Pitt as the weak-heeled Achilles) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005, opposite Angelina Jolie). His other films include A River Runs Through It (1992), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), The Mexican (2001, with Julia Roberts), Babel (2006) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, with Casey Affleck).

Extra credit: Once engaged to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Pitt married actress Jennifer Aniston in 2000. They divorced in 2005, amid rumors that Pitt had begun a romantic relationship with Angelina Jolie, his co-star from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Those rumors were confirmed early in 2006, when Jolie legally changed her two adopted children's names to Zahara Jolie-Pitt and Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Pitt and Jolie then had a daughter together -- Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, who was born on 27 May 2006 in the country of Namibia -- adopted a four-year-old boy, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt (b. 2003 in Vietnam), and then had twins named Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline on 12 July 2008. Pitt's children are, in order of age: Maddox (b. 2001 in Cambodia), Pax (b. 2003 in Vietnam), Zahara (b. 2005 in Ethiopia), Shiloh (b. 2006 in Namibia), and the twins Knox and Vivienne (b. 2008).

Pitt appears in our loop They Played Vampires, along with Christopher Lee and Nicolas Cage.

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