By Claire McKim
HE may be one of Hollywood’s most respected male stars but Brad Pitt has delivered a damning verdict on some of his most famous film roles.
Pitt, who was in Glasgow last summer filming Zombie flick World War Z, has laid into some of his much loved performances, saying he “flatlined” and “flunked”.
Speaking of his Oscar nominated role in Twelve Monkeys, Pitt said: “I think I was forced on Terry (Gilliam). I got the first half dead-on but I flunked the second.”
In an interview with a newspaper, he was even more scathing of his starring role in the 1998 film Meet Joe Black, saying: “I flatlined in that one.”
Pitt said he felt “miscast” in the Hollywood epic Interview with the Vampire, in which he starred alongside Tom Cruise and Christian Slater.
And on one of his first lead roles as a cowboy in Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise, he said: “That was the first time I was let into the show. I remember thinking, ‘oh that’s how I come off.’ I felt I could have had more weight.
Even though he spoke negatively about some of his most famous film roles, Pitt refused to say a bad word about the critically-panned 2005 release Mr and Mrs Jones, where he met his future partner, Angelina Jolie.
He said: “That was a monumental change for more reasons than one, six plus one, to be exact. I think the film has merit too. It’s really good fun,” he said.
Oscar Nominations
Earlier this week Pitt received two Oscar nominations for his role as producer and actor in Moneyball, where he acts alongside Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a baseball team manager who used computer-generated analysis to allow his small team to compete with the best.
He described the film, based on the real life of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane, as “good stuff.”
To prepare for the role he spent time with Beane, who he says was “a funny fucker, sharp as a knife,” who, “shunned the limelight.”
He added: “He reminded me of the characters I love from the 70s films. When I started in film I was taught that you had to have a character arc and there had to be an epiphany. As the years went by I have found that to be utter bullshit. We don’t really change; we evolve in degrees and what I love about these characters from the 70s like Popeye Doyle is they were the same beast at the end of the film as they were at the beginning. I do love obsessive characters. I get off on watching that.”
Pitt may be enjoying critical success in his career, but he describes a darker time in his life, in the 90’s, when he says he was smoking too much dope.
He said; “I’d smoked a lot of weed. I was professional at it. I wasn’t participating in life. I was smoking myself into a doughnut, a mollusc. I got disgusted with it.”
He decided to quite the drug, a decision he is happy about now: “At the end I came to the simple conclusion that I wanted to make things and be a part of stories that were personal and that I could bring value to and if I got this opportunity, to contribute something to the zeitgeist of film-making.”
Parts of Glasgow were turned into war-torn ruins last September as Pitt filmed zombie movie World War Z.
Local’s were cast as zombie extras as a film crew of about 1,200 shot scenes at George Square and other city centre locations.
Glasgow City Council said the positive impact of the production on the local economy was likely to be in excess of £2m.
