Hollywood star Brad Pitt turns 60 on December 18th. A look back at his most important roles on the way to Oscar triumph.
At the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020, Hollywood icon Brad Pitt (59), who celebrates his 60th birthday on December 18th, was finally given the honor that he had received 20 years earlier for his performance in David Fincher’s (61st). ) Cult classic “Fight Club” would have been allowed: For his performance in Quentin Tarantino’s (60) instant cult film “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”, the sex symbol of the 1990s was awarded an Oscar for “Best Supporting Actor” awarded – the mime’s only Academy Award to date in an acting category.
Breakthrough with “Thelma & Louise”
Since the mid-1990s at the latest, there has basically been no way around Pitt in Hollywood. He first literally exploded on the screen in Ridley Scott’s (86) feminism masterpiece “Thelma & Louise” from 1991. Here, Pitt plays the seducer JD, who is full of sex appeal, who is married to the unhappily married main character Thelma (Geena Davis, 67 ) ends up in bed, then robs her, and is only seen very briefly in the film. But these brief scenes were enough to establish Pitt’s status as a sex symbol for the rest of his career.
From supporting actor to Hollywood star
In the years that followed, the extremely attractive American with blue eyes and a square chin demonstrated a knack for choosing his roles. Twice – in “A River Emerges from the Middle” (1992) and “Legends of Passion” (1994) – he played the romantic hero in epic historical films with long blonde hair. His appearance in the romantic bloodsucker classic “Interview with a Vampire” (1994) was similar, although completely different. With all of these performances, Pitt melted the hearts of numerous film viewers.
In the cult classic “True Romance” (1993) by director Tony Scott (1944-2012) based on a script by Quentin Tarantino, Pitt demonstrated his immense comedic talent for the first time. His short appearances as the pot-smoking, good-for-nothing roommate Floyd have remained unforgettable among film fans to this day.
This was followed by a series of more classic Hollywood leading roles – for example in the somewhat lengthy “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997), alongside old star Harrison Ford (81) in the IRA thriller “Familiar Enemy” (1997). and in the rather unusual romance “Rendezvous with Joe Black” (1998).
But what really defined Pitt’s work during this time was his collaboration with director David Fincher. In “Seven”, the first of three collaborations between the two creatives, the legendary filmmaker put Hollywood legend Morgan Freeman (86) at Pitt’s side and unleashed his energetic New York detective David Mills on an eternally rainy, gloomy urban hell in which a fanatical serial killer murdered the biblical seven deadly sins.
In particular, the for a change sun-drenched finale of the noirish thriller went down in film history straight away – and Pitt, who plays a central role in it, with him.
In addition to all of these more mainstream cinematic, iconic roles, Pitt also discovered his slightly strange side over the course of the 1990s. He convincingly embodied a rural white trash sociopath in the still far too unknown serial killer road movie “Kalifornia” and played an inmate of a psychiatric hospital in the time travel cult film “12 Monkeys” by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam (83). Clinic that may be responsible for the near end of humanity.
“Fight Club”: Brad Pitt’s possibly best role
However, even these masterpieces pale in comparison to David Fincher’s subversive pop culture phenomenon “Fight Club” from 1999. Brad Pitt embodies a character in the film – whose final twist probably overshadows “Seven” – Tyler Durden , into which he was able to put all his charisma, his physicality and his coolness.
But for a film of this magnitude, “Fight Club” flopped at the worldwide box office and only later became a cult film in home cinema release. For this reason, Pitt’s performance was not recognized with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor or other film awards that were due.
From the “Ocean’s” trilogy to Quentin Tarantino
With “Fight Club” at the latest, Pitt had finally arrived at Hollywood’s Olympus. But he by no means rested on his laurels in the following decade. In the acclaimed “Ocean’s” trilogy from 2001 to 2007, he once again demonstrated his casual cool alongside co-star George Clooney (62). For the German director Wolfgang Petersen (1941-2022), he made a rare foray into the high-budget blockbuster genre in the historical film “Troja” (2004). He aged backwards for “Fight Club” director David Fincher in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008).
Pitt’s more artistically challenging projects also occurred during this time. He once again demonstrated his comedic talent in the London gangster cult film “Snatch” by Guy Ritchie (55). In the brilliant comedy, Pitt plays the mumbling one-punch boxer Mickey, which also includes some of his “Fight Club” character Tyler Durden.
Pitt delivered perhaps the funniest performance of his entire career in “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brothers’ wonderful spy comedy. Since the film’s release in 2008, Chad, his lovable and goofy fitness trainer and amateur blackmailer, has been immortalized in numerous popular GIFs and has thus found his place in pop culture.
On the other hand, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” flew under the radar. For his performance in Andrew Dominik’s (56) Indy-Western, Pitt was awarded “Best Actor” at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.
Brad Pitt’s late work, on the other hand, probably begins with Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” from 2009. In the magnificent Second World War comedy, the star embodies Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who borders on a caricature and who, among other things, says “Buongiorno” in a memorably bad way . Brad Pitt clearly fits perfectly into Tarantino’s hyper-stylized macho world, as “Inglourious Basterds” made clear long before “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”.
From “World War Z” to “Bullet Train”
Pitt delivered one of the best performances of his entire career in the captivating sports film “The Art of Winning – Moneyball” in 2011. But since the all-American sport of baseball never really arrived in Germany, the work based on a script by Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin (62) was not really noticed in this country.
Pitt surprisingly achieved the greatest financial success of his career in 2013 with the zombie actioner “World War Z”. The film grossed $540 million at the box office worldwide.
Pitt’s well-publicized relationship and marriage with Hollywood star Angelina Jolie (48) was framed by two joint film appearances: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” in 2005 offered popcorn cinema in the classic sense and grossed over $487 million financially extremely successful. In 2015, however, neither audiences nor critics could do anything with “By the Sea”, which was based on European arthouse cinema of the 1960s and 70s.
Pitt delivered a more convincing romantic performance just a year later in Robert Zemeckis’ (71) underrated Second World War thriller “Allied – Familiar Strangers” alongside Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (48). In 2015, in the anti-capitalism satire “The Big Short” by Adam McKay (55), he played the disillusioned trader Ben Rickert in the middle of a veritable star ensemble.
But all of these grandiose performances may pale a little in comparison to stuntman Cliff Booth, who supports Leonardo DiCaprio’s (49) washed-up film star Rick Dalton in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”. In this acclaimed role, Pitt does and says comparatively little in front of the camera. Instead, he once again relies entirely on his proven physique and coolness.
His morally questionable character gets into unnecessary fights on the film set and may even have murdered his wife. As mentioned at the beginning, there was unfortunately the only acting Oscar from Brad Pitt’s long and successful career.
After the corona pandemic, the mime returned to the big screen in 2022 with two exciting new works. In the action comedy “Bullet Train” by “Deadpool 2” director David Leitch (48), Pitt plays contract killer Ladybug, who actually wants to do everything differently than before, and yet falls back into old behavior patterns through no fault of his own. The film was also quite successful at the box office, grossing almost $240 million.
However, “Babylon – Rush of Ecstasy”, Damien Chazelle’s (38) large-scale panorama of Hollywood at the transition from silent to sound films, flopped. In the “La La Land” director’s latest work, Pitt embodies film star Jack Conrad, who fails precisely because of this change.