The “most memorable” acting advice Brad Pitt ever received
If anyone makes stardom look like a walk in the park, it’s Brad Pitt. The actor travelled to Hollywood on a whim at the age of 22 and wound up as one of its biggest stars. With a reported salary of $20million per film, memories of his childhood in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and Springfield, Missouri, must seem as though they belong to some distant dream. As one of Hollywood’s most celebrated leading men, Pitt has worked with countless world-class directors, from Quentin Tarantino to Adam McKay. Here, he recalls the most memorable piece of direction he’s ever received.
Pitt shot to fame following his portrayal of a cowboy hitchhiker in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise. A year later, he jumped back into the saddle to star in his first leading role in A River Runs Through It, which was followed by 1994’s sweeping historical epic Legends of The Fall. By the mid-1990s, Pitt was already one of the most famous faces in Hollywood, having won critical praise for films such as David Fincher’s Seven, 12 Monkeys, and, of course, Fight Club.
With the arrival of the 2000s, Pitt found even greater commercial success, appearing in a slew of action films such as Ridley Scott’s blood-soaked sword and sandal movie Troy, Mr and Mrs Jones, and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, in which he stars as the cigar-chomping, Nazi-pulverizing Lt. Aldo Rein – one of the most violent roles of his entire career.
When the cast members of Bullet Train were asked to name the most memorable piece of the direction they’ve received, Pitt was the first to offer a reply. “I actually have an answer for this,” he announced. “I worked with this director – who may remain nameless – and he goes: ‘You know when a serial killer has a victim around the throat and chokes him till he passes out and then revives him so he can do it again? Do that.'”
Pitt didn’t need to name the director because it was quite obviously Quentin Tarantino, who Pitt first worked with in 1993 when the Pulp Fiction director was working as a writer on True Romance. The pair would reunite for Inglorious Basterds in 2006 and then come together (probably for the last time) for 2022’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, in which Pitt does some serious damage to a bunch of murderous hippies while tripping on acid.
You can check out that clip below. Be warned; it’s pretty strong stuff. But you probably already know that.
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