Hottest man on earth :)
A critic once wrote that Brad Pitt combined "the matinee idol looks of Gary Cooper with the sex symbol loveliness of Marilyn Monroe".He was born William Bradley Pitt on the 18th of December, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and remains a mid-Westerner to the core. He was raised, alongside brother Doug and sister Julie, in Springfield, Missouri. His father, Bill, managed a trucking firm, working six days a week for 36 years - something of which Brad is very proud. His mother, Jane, was a High School counselor, but his mind-set was influenced more by his dad. "Where I grew up," he once said "you deal. You get through it, power through it, straight up the middle. And you don't complain". It's an attitude that's served him well as he's battled the improbable pressures of stardom.
A decent fellow, he was brought up as a Baptist, singing in the church choir. He loved movies, later recalling a fine day spent at an Ape-athon, watching all five Planet Of The Apes films, back-to-back. At Kickapoo High School he was involved in everything. He was a member of the golf, tennis and swimming teams, as well as the Key and Forensics clubs. Graduating in 1982, he attended the University of Missouri, majoring in journalism, but also concentrating on advertising. Indeed, his ambition was to be an art director. He joined a fraternity, Sigma Chi, but always remained very close to his family. Fellow students recall him writing letters to his mother and grandma while in class.
His choice of career was something of a surprise to those around him. He'd acted in several fraternity shows, but never really revealed a desire to act professionally. Music seemed to be more his thing. But then suddenly, with no real experience behind him, he simply went for it. With two credits still needed before he graduated, in 1986 he climbed into his Datsun (known as Runaround Sue) and, with just $325 in his pocket, took off for California. "In my head," he later said "I was done with college. I was on to the next thing".
The father of a girl he knew had an apartment in California, occupied only by a housekeeper, and here he stayed for a month, rent free. Having made a few friends, he then moved into a flat in North Hollywood, along with eight other guys. They had no furniture, just a TV, a toaster oven and a stereo system. They all slept on the floor in the front room. It was basically Bloke Heaven. For money, they'd go down to the Job Factory, picking up odd jobs here and there. At one point, he had a bet with a buddy as to who could score the most humiliating job. Brad won hands down, dressing up as a giant chicken for El Pollo Loco and hanging out on the corner of Sunset Boulevard in 100 degree heat. Aside from this, he spent time selling cigarettes, delivering fridges, and, bizarrely, assisting a soap opera writer. He even worked driving strippers around in a limousine.
Pitt took the acting lark deadly seriously. He studied under coach Roy London, and would continue to do so for six years, from the off impressing his fellow students with his emotional freedom. And work came quickly. He appeared in the sit-com Head Of The Class, for a while dating the show's star Robin Givens, much to the disgruntlement of her ex-hubbie Mike Tyson. There was also an episode of Growing Pains. There were a few movie roles too. He had uncredited parts in both Less Than Zero and Charlie Sheen's No Man's Land. Then came Cutting Class, about a maniac stalking cheerleaders.
Then came the first starring role, in Dark Side Of The Sun, where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for his terrible skin condition. The movie was shot in Yugoslavia, with Brad being paid $1,523 a week for seven weeks. It was looking good. Then, with editing nearly complete, civil war broke out and much of the film was lost in the ensuing chaos. It would be rediscovered years later, and the film released, but Brad's first shot at success was gone.
Brad won a part in the TV movie Too Young To Die?, about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. As white trash drug-hound pimp Billy Canton, Brad was thoroughly unpleasant, taking beastly advantage of runaway Juliette Lewis, who he began dating in real life. "It was quite romantic," he later observed dryly "shooting her full of drugs and stuff". The pair would be together for three years, during which period Brad's career took off big-time.
2003 would see Pitt lend his voice to the titular hero of the animated Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas. But this was just a prelude to a far more ambitious mythical epic, Wolfgang Petersen's $220 million Troy. Having consciously avoided starring roles that played up his looks, now Brad went the whole hog as Achilles, the elite warrior charged by King Agamemnon to lead the seige of Troy and win back the stolen wife of his brother Menelaus. Petersen pulled out the stops in making Pitt look like a Greek god. Pitt, on the other hand, never keen to pose when he could be acting, attempted to deepen his character by playing Achilles as an embittered man with a profound disrespect for authority and an unhealthy death wish. Even so, it was his titanic battle with Eric Bana's Hector that really stood out in a movie marked by its spectacular SFX.Such was the scope of Troy that Pitt was forced to pull out of Darren Aronofsky's sci-fi epic The Fountain. Coincidentally, a severe pulling of his Achilles' tendon also put back the filming of a forthcoming effort, a return to Soderbergh and Clooney with Ocean's 12, where the old gang regroup to pull off three major European heists. In the meantime there would be Mr And Mrs Smith, where Brad and Angelina Jolie would play a happy husband and wife who, both being secret assassins, discover they've been hired to kill each other.
Today he is going through a divorce with Jennifer Anniston and is said to be dating hot star Angeline Jolie.
Source: Tiscali Film and TV
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