“My education is on film, on record!”: The three performances Brad Pitt will always regret
Though you have to attribute some of his success to his good looks, Brad Pitt is clearly also very talented.
He’s starred in some absolutely bangin’ movies and given life to some truly tremendous characters. From the mysterious Tyler Durden to his Oscar-winning turn as Cliff Booth, his CV speaks for itself. Unfortunately, when you’ve been in the public eye for the best part of 40 years, there’s bound to be some skeletons in your closet.
According to Letterboxd, some of Pitt’s worst movies include The Favor, a boring romcom, Happy Feet Two, which I didn’t even realise he was in, and Cool World, a half-live action, half-animated disaster that wishes it was one-tenth as good as Who Framed Roger Rabbit. However, if you were to ask the man himself, he has an entirely different list of lowlights.
Speaking to Digital Spy in 2007, Pitt outlined some of the films from the early years of his career that still keep him up at night. The first film he agreed with critics on was only his second major role, and it’s one that I doubt many of you will have ever heard of.
Pitt played bad boy student Dwight Ingalls in Rospo Pallenberg’s 1989 black comedy Cutting Class. A jock who vies for the affections of the lovely Paula, played by Jill Schoelen, against recently released mental patient Brian, played by Donovan Leitch. Things take a dramatic turn when a string of murders begin, with Dwight and Brian coming up as the main suspects. The film was panned by critics at the time, with many noting how it failed to adequately serve audiences of comedy fans and horror junkies.
The next movie comes from much later in Pitt’s career, Seven Years in Tibet, which was released in 1997 and stars him as Heinrich Harrer, a former SS officer who escapes a British prisoner-of-war camp and flees across the Himalayas.
While certain aspects, such as John Williams’ score, were praised, others were slated, including Pitt’s horrid ‘Austrian’ accent. As you can imagine, the film also caused quite a stir in China, resulting in the star being banned from the country for two decades.
The final film on Pitt’s list is by far the most well-known. In 1998, he played a human version of Death in Martin Brest’s Meet Joe Black, who is sent to reap the soul of a successful businessman played by Anthony Hopkins, but instead takes an interest in the material world and decides to hang around for a bit. The icon has spoken many times about how much he regrets the film, but it actually received fairly mixed reviews. If you’ve got a spare three hours (yes, it really is that long), maybe you should give it a go yourself.
As much as the memory of these movies might make him cringe, Pitt is at least grateful for the opportunities he had to learn from them. “I believe I’m quite capable,” he said, “We, as people, can learn to do anything, and that’s proof of it! And my education is on film, on record! Now I can take on anything that comes my way and find truth in it and do a pretty good job.”
