The role Brad Pitt thought he was going mess up: “I was walking the streets like a maniac”
Off the back of Thelma and Louise and True Romance, Brad Pitt was well on his way to becoming a household name. At the time, Pitt was also reaching out to up-and-coming directors, looking for exciting projects to get involved with. However, there was one role the actor signed up for that he truly believed he was going to mess up and destroy the entire production.
At the same time Pitt was rising to fame, another new kid on the block, Guy Ritchie, was having a similar trajectory. His pulpy British crime flick, filled with cheeky and lovable gangsters, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, meant actors were knocking on his door eager to work with him, and one of those actors was Pitt.
Pitt had seen Lock, Stock… and was highly impressed, leading to the actor reaching out to Ritchie himself. Pitt told Collider about the first meeting between the two of them: “I was viewing everything of first-time directors, and I saw this movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, by this cat named Guy Ritchie,” Pitt shared. “And so, I called him up and said, ‘Hey, I really like what you’re doing, and if there’s anything that I could fit in, then let’s talk.’ And he said, ‘Well, there is.’ And I said, ‘Great! I’m in!’ And then, panicked until the moment we were shooting.”
The reason for Pitt’s trepidation in taking on the role was that he was cast to play Micky O’Neil, an Irish gypsy boxer, a part that required a very specific accent to be fully authentic. “If you haven’t seen it, I play this Irish gypsy, and the dialect is unintelligible, contrary to being trained to be clear and understood,” Pitt said. “And so, I was working on the accent and trying to be clear and understood, and it wasn’t working”.
Though the actor had clearly put in considerable preparation for the role, he was nervous about pulling off the accent right up until the day before shooting. “I went to him the day before and I said, ‘Guy, I’m gonna mess up your movie. You should do it,’” the star recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.’”
Pitt went away and continued to work and worry about the accent until, eventually, he had a breakthrough moment. “I was literally supposed to be on set the next morning at 6am,” Pitt recalled. “I was living in North London and I was walking the streets like a maniac. My friend kept saying, ‘You can’t understand it.’ Literally at midnight, that clicked in, and I called and woke Guy up and I said, ‘Are you okay if you can’t understand your beautifully written dialogue?’ And he said, ‘Yep.’”
In case you missed it, the film Pitt is referring to is Snatch. Luckily, the method paid off for the star and director, and Pitt’s performance is one of the best and most memorable in the film. Snatch received mixed reviews but was nevertheless successful at the box office and fits happily into the roster of Ritchie’s geezer crime-caper comedies.
