He made fun of himself.Īnd he's good at it. He roughed up his preternatural handsomeness. Pitt picked films in which he could play characters, not objects. Even his frothiest project, the Ocean's franchise, had Steven Soderbergh at the helm. And of course David Fincher ( Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Name a quality director, and Pitt has worked with him: Tony Scott ( True Romance), Robert Redford ( A River Runs Through It), Neil Jordan ( Interview with the Vampire), Terry Gilliam ( 12 Monkeys), Barry Levinson ( Sleepers), Alejandro Inarritu ( Babel), the Coen brothers ( Burn After Reading), Quentin Tarantino ( Inglourious Basterds), Terrence Malick ( The Tree of Life). His movies weren't always hits, but his choices had a brain behind them, an aesthetic. He eschewed sure-fire money-makers, and bet on directors. Instead, he went Hollywood's version of rogue. He could have gone action hero – macho dudes with guns. Pitt could have chosen the heartthrob route – love stories and romantic comedies. It's hard to imagine what a moment like that does for a career, what offers would have flooded in. Geena Davis is relegated to the background the little we see of her, she's gazing at Pitt, panting. He shot Pitt's bare abs as if they were a landscape bathed in a honeyed glow. When Thelma & Louise came out in 1991, Pitt had been in Hollywood four years, playing scruffy kids and working odd jobs. First, I want to talk about his film choices. We'll get to his philanthropy in a minute. But Pitt is "not just the smartest guy in town," McKay says. You could argue that a megacelebrity who craps from his aerie on how other people make money is a hypocrite. "He knew he had to play a real role." He did it for the right reasons, too: The financial world is as dodgy as ever, and Pitt says so on every red carpet he walks. "Brad's presence in the film was key," McKay told me at a recent screening in Toronto. Then he secured the rest of the funds by taking a small (but pivotal) role as Ben Rickert, the smartest of the smartypants, who saw the crisis coming, got out and is now living off the grid, growing his own food. His production company, Plan B Entertainment, provided financing that saw it through a long development process. 23 – five days after Pitt's 52nd birthday – is largely due to his clout and influence.
That The Big Short is Oscar bait, opening in Canada on Dec. Its heroes are villains – sure, they're smart enough to see the meltdown coming, but they profit from it. Not many people could have massaged The Big Short, Michael Lewis's chewy book about the 2007 financial crisis, into a comic drama – especially with a writer-director, Adam McKay, who'd only made Will Ferrell comedies. Brad Pitt is the smartest man in Hollywood.
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