Last summer, when I had just started my vacation, I received a message from Silvia Pini, from De Longhi’s communications agency: “Would you be interested in interviewing Brad Pitt? He is an ambassador of the brand, and gives two interviews. One to Esquire international and another, if you want, to Magazine de La Vanguardia.”
That night I fell asleep late; I would say I even danced, intoxicated by the promise. I thought about the questions, and they all seemed idiotic to me. And I imagined Pitt’s voice greeting me. Also the color of the meeting, which, despite being via Zoom, would allow me what our job has: that a myth with whom you would never come across in your life, talk to you following the formula of firing off questions. But how was I going to disconnect those days with that seed growing wild inside me?
Silvia called me two days later: “Don’t run.” The Hollywood Actors Union supported the screenwriters’ strike. “It’s a shame, because now you have more time, but we have to postpone it.” One hundred and sixty thousand actors – including Pitt, MerylStreep, Matt Damon and Jennifer Lawrence – joined the protest that paralyzed the North American audiovisual industry between July 19 and November 9, 2023 to demand better conditions for the sector. They would not speak to the press either.
I cooled down the idea, without stopping to document myself. I even heard him say that her parents, Jane Etta Hillhouse and William Alvin Pitt, took him to a drive-in movie when he was little. They had four children, two of them, Brad and Doug, blonde and with a sunny smile. Years of hardship passed, but the actor has always remembered how well he knew that KoolAid (preparation powder that his mother dissolved in a liter of water “because we didn’t have any more”). His father, a truck driver, would end up owning his own transportation company and his mother worked as a secretary at a secondary school. Brad, son of the great plains of Oklahoma, had a sporty and Californian youth.
One of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, considered the sexiest, and the only man to have starred in a Chanel No. 5 ad, the pinnacle of femininity, left university halfway and moved to Los Angeles to try his luck as an actor. . He worked at El Pollo Loco and was a boy for everything in the studios. Until his secondary character in Thelma and Louise (1991) updated the morbidity of The Graduate (1967) with a torrid fuck between a mature and desperate woman, Geena Davis, and a seductive young thief. He was immediately elevated to the category of erotic myth by a female audience that was always short on catalogue, and he immediately insisted on proving that he was also a good actor. And he achieved it.
Along with Jennifer Aniston he embodied the wedding couple of the new America; They represented success and light living, they walked around Malibu and he had a cameo in Friends. Brad, more serious and bearded, disheveled and cocky, improved his introspective look. He insisted on proving that he was an actor without a network. Filming a commercial thriller, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), he met Angelina Jolie. They fell in love and got tattoos. Brangelina became a successful brand, a banner for the interracial and non-binary family. Until the marriage broke up abruptly, after the scandal that Pitt apparently caused on a plane.
In his life after living with Jolie, Brad demanded he stop drinking. He volunteered after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans disheveled, with long hair and horn-rimmed glasses, while Angelina gave speeches at the UN. The six children stayed with their mother. Pitt devoted himself to architecture and his friendship with George Clooney.
At 50 he confessed to his friend, director Guy Ritchie, that he felt “damn solid.” Last December, when I received Silvia’s message finally confirming the Zoom, she turned 60. In a decade her entire life had been altered except for her beauty, her incorruptibility. After receiving her second Oscar – the first was as a producer – for Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, she raised the statuette and said: “This is for my children, who give color to everything I do; I adore them,” even though her relationship with them was already distant. In interviews she used to attribute it to the necessary distance that children establish during adolescence. But on Thanksgiving Day last year, one of them, Pax, 19, attacked him online: “A global idiot.”
I saw several films produced by his company, Plan B, and I was struck by They Speak. Most of her works have a vindictive seal in common. And, on several occasions, he has declared that he is “in the last stage” as an actor. Vineyards in Provence, fashion design, collaborations with architects, a cosmetics brand and coffee. For two years he has been a DeLonghi ambassador, following in the footsteps of his friend Clooney. That was the excuse to be able to send him some questions in writing. In the end he answered the interview by email, something we don’t accept at Magazine, but Brad… it’s Brad.
How many times a day do you take a break and what is your idea of ??relaxation?
Always that I can. The first cup of coffee in the morning is the one I savor the most. My schedule is almost always crazy, so I strive to find those quiet moments, whether through music, nature, art, friends, of course, or sitting in front of the fire and literally not doing anything. nothing. For me, distractions are just as important as effort.
He filmed the campaign in Provence with Bennett Miller, who directed him in Moneyball. What is his style as a filmmaker?
I wouldn’t call it “style,” but Bennett’s gift as a director is seeing the beauty in another person’s life, with all its struggle, mess, and longing included. This campaign revolves around “perfect moments.” For me, a perfect moment is not something that can be planned. They are gifts. And I do my best to savor them and stay encouraged until the next one.
Brad became a coffee grower during his student years. “I first discovered coffee in college when I was facing the dreaded all-nighter,” he says. In his email, he details his relationship with coffee: “The first second and third cup in the morning define my ritual. Right or wrong, I don’t let food get in the way. I also love to have some, occasionally, in the afternoon. I appreciate small toasters. I like mine simple, with a splash of milk. The best cup I’ve ever had was in Kyoto. And I had to wait more than fifteen minutes. Now I go back there every trip.”
His interest in architecture and design is well known. What do these other forms of expression give you?
I suppose that architecture and design bring a certain order to existence, and can even improve it. But in the best of cases they elevate the soul to new possibilities, something that is also achieved through music…
What did you learn from Frank Gehry, with whom you spent time in his studio?
“If you know where you’re going, it’s not worth it.”
He has designed furniture and fashion collections. Do you simply feel like a designer, someone who is as creative as he is curious?
As a curious and creative person, I would like to define myself as an artist rather than as a designer. An artist feels that he encompasses everything. An artist feels united to universal truths. I am a creature who is happier discovering than controlling the outcome.
He has vineyards in Provence and has been there recently as well. What is your link with that land?
My stays in Provence? Well, there’s a reason why travelers and artists have been making pilgrimages there for centuries…