The performance Brad Pitt will always regret: “I shouldn’t have been there in the first place”
Brad Pitt has given some highly memorable performances over the years. In the court of public opinion, he is perhaps most appreciated for Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean’s’ movies, David Fincher’s Se7en, or the all-action World War Z. In terms of awards, he won ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the Oscars for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, while the academy has also recognised him for 12 Monkeys, Moneyball, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
It has not always been smooth sailing for the former Mr Jolie, though. Bullet Train, the attempted action-comedy from David Leitch, was awful, with Pitt trotting out a tired ‘hitman with a conscience’ routine. His interpretation of an Irish traveller boxer in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch is beloved by some, but you can understand why some actual members of those communities aren’t fans. Then, one of his most polarising performances of all time is the title character in Meet Joe Black.
Directed by Martin Brest, 1998’s Meet Joe Black stars Anthony Hopkins as a wealthy family man who suffers a fatal heart attack. In an attempt to stave off death, he makes a bargain with the Grim Reaper, promising to show what it’s like to be alive in exchange for extra time on Earth. Death then takes human form, which is where Pitt comes in.
Reviewers didn’t really know what to make of this ambitious project. Its three-hour runtime was severely maligned, especially as there was barely enough story to stretch over such a lengthy frame. The performances came in for flak too, especially Pitt’s. One write-up called his turn as the collector of souls so bad “it hurts”, while the general consensus agreed that the young star had neither the gravitas nor experience to embody an all-powerful cosmic force.
While he was surely hurt by the reviews at the time, in retrospect, Pitt is inclined to agree. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, with over a decade of success between him and Meet Joe Black, the icon revealed that he didn’t look back on this period of his career with much fondness. “That was the pinnacle of my… loss of direction and compass,” he said.
It didn’t help that he was acting alongside Hopkins, widely regarded as one of the best to ever do it. “Mr. Hopkins is one of the greats, and really kind and giving – one of those that I take a lot of notes from,” he opined. “But I dogged it. I muffed it. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I should have been decompressing. I just didn’t crack the piece… Someone could have done a better job in it. Because Tony didn’t dog it. Tony nailed it.”
To be fair, comparing one’s acting abilities to Anthony Hopkins is like comparing one’s flying abilities to a swallow. Acting comes naturally to the Welshman, to the point where he can ‘dog it’ and still give a performance most others would kill for. He’s usually the best part of anything he’s in, even if the rest of the movie is pretty dull.
On the whole, Pitt’s career has yielded far more good than bad. Everyone is allowed a few duds every now and then. As long as he promises never to play a physical incarnation of death ever again, he should be alright.
