The two actors that made Brad Pitt reconsider acting: “I can’t do what they do”
Every actor needs to take a unique approach to their artistic endeavours. No hard and fast rule works across the board, and each role also demands a different tactic that may not be applicable to another character. For Brad Pitt, it took him a long time to realise his strengths and flaws, which was a wake-up call.
Although actors can spend 12 hours a day on a film set for months pretending to be somebody else, they can’t lose sight of who they are as professionals. For some, this means throwing everything they have into the character they are playing in their ongoing project and adopting a method approach. Embodying every aspect of a character for an extended period is not for the faint-hearted and can also make life torturous for those they have to work alongside.
Regarding this approach, Pitt has only dipped his toes into the water rather than fully committing to embracing his character’s psyche. When he was shooting the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglorious Bastards, Pitt was liberal with his approach to hygiene, which did allow him to get a feel for Aldo Raine’s plight but led to a complaint from Eli Roth. His co-star later shared to People: “After a scene, Brad had to get next to me for a close-up shot, and he said, ‘Damn, you’re ripe.’ I said, ‘I didn’t have time to shower.’ He said, ‘Baby wipes, man, baby wipes.'”
Thankfully, unlike Christian Bale, missing the occasional shower is as far as Pitt has taken it regarding method acting. Famously, he fully invests himself in whoever he’s playing when he’s performing, including as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, which is a technique that Pitt can’t do himself. However, their respective approaches work for them individually.
For Pitt, it’s about incorporating his personal experiences into the role. In his mind, this attribute separates him from any of the other actors he may be competing with to secure the role, as it’s exclusive to his own existence. The battle scars and bruises that he’s accumulated over the years are only available to be mined by Pitt; therefore, he chooses to lean into them.
During an interview with GQ in 2019, Pitt explained: “It’s been my question the last 15 years: ‘If I’m gonna do the role, what can I bring to it that someone else can’t?’ Well, it’s about bringing my personal experience, my personal humour, my personal, um, embarrassments, and my personal pains.”
The actor then highlighted Christian Bale and Tom Hardy as having two different skill sets which he can’t replicate in his own work, adding, “When I watch Bale or Hardy, I can’t do what they do. I love watching them. And I couldn’t step into that role. I want to do the same thing on my end.”
Although Hardy isn’t a method actor in the traditional sense like Bale, he does get himself into the mind of his character and deeply analyses their personality. He told Digital Spy in 2024: “I always like to take something that’s an obvious choice and try them over with a less obvious choice, and then look for an obvious choice as a counterpoint, and then try them with some consideration and a less obvious choice.”
For Hardy and Bale, it’s all about the character they are playing and immersing themselves in that world. Although this kind of acting doesn’t work for Pitt, his technique allows him to bring something else to the role, which he’s interpolated from his own life rather than the words on paper. With acting, there’s no right or wrong way to do things, which is why all three of them have risen to the top of the same profession despite their contrasting outlooks.
