“It bugged the shit out of me”: the Oscar-nominated performance Brad Pitt wasn’t happy with
The biggest challenge Brad Pitt faced in the early years of his career was proving to the world he was a good actor, something that doesn’t come across as being too difficult for a man of his undoubted talents.
However, because he was so damned handsome, finding the roles that would allow him to showcase a different side of himself were few and far between. Of course, everyone in Hollywood has been fully aware of his chops for decades, but in the early 1990s, casting agents regularly saw him as just a pretty face with nothing between the ears.
It’s a first-world problem for such a ridiculously telegenic man to have, but it wasn’t until Dominic Sena’s 1993 road trip thriller Kalifornia – his ninth credited performance in a feature and 12th overall – that he was given the leeway to explore the darker side of himself as a psychopathic ex-con.
Ironically, his next film appearance after that came in True Romance, where he stole every scene he was in by leaning into his genial, laid-back, and very good-looking persona. He remained on the hunt for the role that would elevate him to the next level and convince the industry he was somebody to be taken seriously as a dramatic performer, and he eventually found it two years later.
The downside is that he wasn’t best pleased with his work in the film, even if the part of Jeffrey Goines in Terry Gilliam’s mind-bending sci-fi 12 Monkeys earned him the first Academy Award nomination of his career in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category, and he won a Golden Globe for his efforts.
Playing an institutionalised environmentalist and animal rights activist experiencing severe delusions of creating a new world order where animals have become the dominant lifeform on the planet following the extinction of humanity, the rich kid with a messiah complex was a difficult character to embody, especially when Goines’ eccentricities could have easily devolved into hammy scenery-chewing.
Winning a Golden Globe and earning an Oscar nod indicates that Pitt pulled it off, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. Although he clarified to the New York Times that he “nailed the first half of 12 Monkeys,” the actor drew the line at the midway point.
“I got the second half all wrong,” he confessed. “That performance bothered me because there was a trap in the writing. It’s not the writing’s fault, but it was something that I couldn’t figure out. I knew in the second half of the film I was playing the gimmick of what was real in the first half – until the last scene – and it bugged the shit out of me.”
Pitt thought he should have made Goines “completely frightening in the second half of the movie,” but the complex narrative web being weaved by 12 Monkeys left him unable – in his mind, at least – to realise the character to the best of his abilities. The Academy disagreed, with Pitt firmly in the minority believing he missed the mark.
