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Brad and Actress Angelina Jolie are
expecting their first child this year.
Brad Pitt Measurements
~ 6'1 205 lbs.
Biggest Stars : Brad Pitt
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With
looks that have inspired countless People magazine
covers, Internet shrines, and estrogen surges, Brad Pitt
is an actor whose very name inspires drooling
platitudes, more about male beauty than about acting.
Following his breakthrough as the wickedly charming
drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind
in Thelma & Louise (1991), Pitt became one of
Hollywood's hottest properties and spent most of the
1990s being lauded as everything from Robert Redford's
heir apparent to the Sexiest Man Alive.
Pitt's ascension to his celluloid throne was a long and
sometimes frustrating one. The son of a trucking company
manager, Pitt was born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee,
OK. Raised in Missouri, Pitt, the oldest of three
children, was brought up in a strict Baptist household.
Following his high-school graduation, he enrolled at the
University of Missouri, where he studied journalism and
advertising. However, after discovering his love of
acting, he dropped out of college two credit hours
before he could graduate and moved to Hollywood. Fearful
of his parents' reaction, he told them he was going to
Pasadena to study at the Art Center College of Design.
Once in California, Pitt took acting classes and
supported himself with a variety of odd jobs that
included chauffeuring strippers to private parties,
waiting tables, and wearing a giant chicken suit for a
local restaurant chain. His first break came when he
landed a small recurring role on Dallas, and a part in a
teenage-slasher movie, Cutting Class (1989), marked his
inauspicious entrance into the world of feature films.
The previous year, Pitt's acting experience had been
limited to the TV movie A Stoning in Fulgham County
(1988).
1991 marked the end of Pitt's sojourn in the land of
obscurity, as it was the year he made his appearance in
Thelma & Louise. After becoming famous practically
overnight, Pitt unfortunately chose to channel his
newfound celebrity into Ralph Bakshi's disastrous Cool
World (1992). Following this misstep, Pitt took a
starring role in director Tom Di Cillo's independent
film Johnny Suede. The film failed to find favor with
critics or at the box office and Pitt's documented
clashes with the director allegedly inspired Di Cillo to
pattern the character of the vain and egotistical Chad
Palomino, in his 1995 Living in Oblivion, after the
actor. Pitt's next venture, Robert Redford's 1992
fly-fishing drama A River Runs Through It, gave the
actor a much-needed chance to prove that he had talent
in addition to his looks. Following his performance in
Redford's film, Pitt appeared in Kalifornia and True
Romance (both 1993), two road movies featuring fallen
women, violent sociopaths, and tumbleweeds.
Pitt's next major role did not come until 1994, when he
was cast as the lead of the gorgeously photographed
Legends of the Fall. As he did in A River Runs Through
It, Pitt portrayed a free-spirited, strong-willed
brother, but this time had greater opportunity to
further develop his enigmatic character. Following the
film's release, People magazine dubbed him the Sexiest
Man Alive. That same year, fans watched in anticipation
as Pitt exchanged his outdoorsy persona for the
brooding, gothic posturing of Anne Rice's tortured
vampire Louis in the film adaptation of Interview With
the Vampire. Starring opposite Tom Cruise, Pitt enjoyed
the further helping of fame that was served up by the
film's success.
Pitt next starred in the forgettable romantic comedy The
Favor (1994) before going on to play a rookie detective
investigating a series of gruesome crimes opposite
Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995). In 1997, Pitt received a
Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for his
portrayal of a visionary mental patient in Terry
Gilliam's 12 Monkeys; the same year, Pitt attempted an
Austrian accent and put on a backpack to play
mountaineer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet. The
film met with mixed reviews and generated a fair amount
of controversy, thanks in part to the revelation that
the real-life Harrar had in fact been a Nazi.
Furthermore, due to its pro-Tibetan stance, the film
also resulted in Pitt's being banned from China for
life. Following Tibet, Pitt traveled in a less
inflammatory direction with Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's
Own, in which he starred with fellow screen icon
Harrison Ford. Despite this seemingly faultless pairing,
the film was a relative critical and box-office failure.
In 1998, Pitt tried his hand at romantic drama,
portraying Death in Meet Joe Black, the most expensive
non-special effects film ever made. The film, which
weighed in at three hours in length, met with
excessively mixed reviews, although more than one critic
remarked that Pitt certainly made a very appealing
representative of the afterlife.
Pitt's penchant for quirk was prevalent with his cameo
in the surreal comic fantasy Being John Malkovich (1999)
and carried over into his role as Tyler Durden, the
mysterious and anti-materialistic soap salesman in David
Fincher's controversial Fight Club the same year. The
odd characterizations didn't let up with his appearance
as the audibly indecipherable pugilist in Guy Ritchie's
eagerly anticipated follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels, Snatch (2000).
In July of 2000, the man voted "Most Sexy Actor Alive"
by virtually every entertainment publication currently
in circulation crushed the hearts of millions of adoring
female fans when he wed popular film and television
actress Jennifer Aniston in a relatively modest (at
least by Hollywood standards) and intimate service.
Pitt's next turn on the big screen found him re-teamed
with Robert Redford, this time sharing the screen with
the A River Runs Through It director in the espionage
thriller Spy Game (2001). A fairly retro-straight-laced
role for an actor who had become identified with his
increasingly eccentric roles, he was soon cast in Steven
Soderbergh's remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11
(2001), the tale of a group of criminals who plot to rob
a string of casinos.
Following a decidedly busy 2001 that also included a
lead role opposite Julia Roberts in the romantic
crime-comedy The Mexican, Pitt was virtually absent from
the big-screen over the next three years. After walking
away from the ambitious and proplematic Darren Aronofsky
production The Fountain, he popped up for a very brief
cameo in pal George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and lent his voice to
the animated adventure Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas,
but spent the majority of his time working on the
historical epic Troy. Directed by Wolfgang Peterson, the
film employed a huge cast, crew and budget and premiered
in May of 2004.
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