Brad Pitt teased in a candid new interview that he is nearing retirement after more than 30 years in the entertainment industry.
“I consider myself on my last leg,” the actor, 58, said in his August 2022 GQ cover story. “This last semester or trimester. What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?”
Pitt, who began acting at the age of 22, has starred in iconic movies such as “Fight Club,” “Moneyball,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and the “Ocean’s Eleven” series.
“I’m one of those creatures that speaks through art,” he continued. “I just want to always make. If I’m not making, I’m dying in some way.”
While the Oscar winner has not given up on work just yet, he has quit something else: cigarettes.
While the actor said he’s on his last “trimester” of his career, he also noted he’s “dying” if he’s not creating something.Elizaveta Porodina/GQ
Pitt told the magazine that he decided to stop smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic because he is “at that age when nothing good comes from it.”
“I think joy’s been a newer discovery, later in life,” he shared. “I was always moving with the currents, drifting in a way, and onto the next. I think I spent years with a low-grade depression, and it’s not until coming to terms with that, trying to embrace all sides of self—the beauty and the ugly — that I’ve been able to catch those moments of joy.”
Pitt said he’s been finding joy “later in life.”A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images
The “Departed” producer currently resides in a home in Hollywood Hills, Calif., that he bought in 1994 in the midst of his rise to stardom.
While he told GQ that he has been “pretty much hiding out” in the once “run-down and dilapidated” fixer-upper, Pitt will soon emerge again to promote his latest film, “Bullet Train,” which hits theaters Aug. 5.
The “Fight Club” star admitted to “hiding out” in his Hollywood Hills, Calif., home lately.WireImage
The “Thelma & Louise” star is still in the midst of a tumultuous court battle with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
The “Maleficent” actress, 47, filed for divorce in September 2016 after two years of marriage and 12 years together. They were declared legally single in April 2019 but continue to hash out issues including custody of their children.
Brad Pitt is suing ex-wife Angelina Jolie, accusing her of illegally selling off her share of their French estate, Château Miraval.
Pitt alleges they had agreed that neither would sell their share of the Château — where they married in 2014 — and its profitable vineyard without agreement from the other party.
But the “Fight Club” star claims in the suit that while the vineyard became “Pitt’s passion,” Jolie brazenly sold off her share to Russian businessman Yuri Shefler without his permission.
The court documents, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, state, “Jolie consummated the purported sale without Pitt’s knowledge, denying Pitt the consent right she owed him and the right of first refusal her business entity owed his.
“She sold her interest with the knowledge and intention that Shefler and his affiliates would seek to control the business to which Pitt had devoted himself and to undermine Pitt’s investment in Miraval.”
The vineyard property is worth $164 million.AFP via Getty Images
The Miraval estate is located in the village of Correns in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in southeastern France. The 35-room mansion is surrounded by lush gardens with a moat, fountains, aqueducts, a pond, a chapel, and a vineyard that Pitt says he has invested a large amount of money in.
Jolie, 46, and Pitt, 58, bought the estate in 2008 for $28.4 million, with the intent to bring up their children there and build a family wine business. The couple tied the knot there in 2014, splitting in 2019.
And while their messy divorce has been finalized, the couple is still embroiled in court battles over child custody and their considerable assets.
Pitt developed the vineyard at Miraval into a multimillion-dollar business and one of the world’s top producers of rosé wine.
But the court papers state that, by 2013, “Jolie stopped contributing altogether” for the renovations, while Pitt “continued to invest millions of dollars … [funding] roughly 70 percent of the couple’s investment in Miraval.”
In January 2021, “Jolie informed Pitt in writing that she had reached a ‘painful decision, with a heavy heart,’” the suit alleges.
“Jolie explained she had purchased Miraval with Pitt ‘as a family business’ and as the place she believed they ‘would grow old’ together,” the suit continues.
“Nevertheless,” Jolie continued, she could “no longer maintain any ownership position in an alcohol-based business given her personal objections.” Pitt began negotiations to buy out Jolie’s share.
Exes Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are battling it out over their French château. Getty Images; Wireimage
Then, in October 2021, the wine division of the Stoli Group, Tenute del Mondo, announced it purchased Jolie’s 50 percent stake in the estate and the wines it produces. The business is controlled by Russian businessman Shefler.
The sale was a surprise to Pitt, who now claims he is deprived of using the Château as his private home and can no longer oversee the company that he helped to create and invested millions of dollars into.
The suit adds, “Jolie seeks to recover unearned windfall profits for herself while inflicting gratuitous harm on Pitt. Jolie long ago stopped contributing to Miraval — while Pitt poured money and sweat equity into the wine business. Jolie seeks to seize profits she has not earned and returns on an investment she did not make.”
Plus, “The purported sale deprives Pitt of his right to enjoy his private home and to oversee the business he developed from scratch.”
Brangelina tied the knot at their vineyard estate in Le Val, France on August 23, 2014.INF Photo
And while Pitt’s investment and work to develop Miraval wine now means the property is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, “Miraval’s success and associated rise in value allowed Jolie an opportunity to capitalize on Pitt’s success and cash out, without ever having lifted a finger to grow the enterprise.”
A source familiar with the situation added, “Unfortunately, this is another example of the same person disregarding her legal and ethical obligations.
“In doing so, she has violated the rights of the only person who poured money and sweat equity into the success of the business by purporting to sell both the business and family home to a third-party competitor.
“She is seeking a return on an investment she did not make and profits she did not earn.”
Lawyers and a rep for Jolie were not immediately available for comment.
Angelina Jolie claims she feared for the safety of her children and family during her marriage to Brad Pitt — and was attacked by Harvey Weinstein early in her career.
In a bombshell interview with The Guardian, Jolie obliquely talked about her never-ending divorce from Pitt while pushing about her new book “Know Your Rights,” stammering “I … I’m still in my own legal situation,” including allegations of child abuse leveled at Pitt.
The actress claims she was scared for “my whole family” during the union.
“I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly,” she told the paper. “It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.”
Jolie and Pitt share six children: Maddox, 20, Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 15, and 13-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox. Maddox is not included in the ongoing custody battle because he is no longer a minor.
Jolie filed for divorce in 2016. Pitt was cleared of child abuse allegations made by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services regarding an incident between him and Maddox on a plane from the US to Europe.
Jolie and Pitt have six children and are currently in a custody dispute over the five who are still minors.Splash News
While the duo are now legally divorced, they are still battling over custody of their children.
The “Inglourious Basterds” actor was first granted joint custody of the former couple’s five minor children in May by Judge John W. Ouderkirk, but a California appeals court disqualified Ouderkirk because it was found that he did not adequately disclose business relationships with Pitt’s attorneys.
Ouderkirk, who declined to disqualify himself from their divorce when Jolie asked him to in a 2020 court filing, has a long past with the family. He even married Pitt and the “Maleficent” actress in 2014.
Pitt declined to comment to the Guardian.
Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in 2016.AKM-GSI
When asked about the last five years, Jolie said the divorce had been “traumatic” and added: “I mean, in some ways it’s been the last decade. There’s a lot I can’t say … I think at the end of the day, even if you and a few people you love are the only people who know the truth of your life, what you fight for, or what you sacrifice, or what you’ve suffered, you come to be at peace with that, regardless of everything going on around you.”
Another issue she had with Pitt during their marriage was his willingness to work with rapist Harvey Weinstein whom, she claims, abused her.
Jolie referred to the divorce from Pitt as “traumatic.”Photo by Pierre Suu/GC Images
“It was beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape,” said Jolie, who starred in Weinstein’s “Playing by Heart” when she was 21.
“I stayed away and warned people about him. I remember telling Jonny, my first husband, who was great about it, to spread the word to other guys – don’t let girls go alone with him. I was asked to do ‘The Aviator’, but I said no because he was involved. I never associated or worked with him again. It was hard for me when Brad did.”
Jolie claims Pitt asked Weinstein to work as a producer for the noir thriller, “Killing Them Softly,” which the Weinstein Company later distributed.
“We fought about (Weinstein’s involvement),” Jolie said, noting of her then husband’s apparent eagerness to work with Weinstein, “Of course it hurt.”
The Guardian ran a long profile of actor, director, author, and activist Angelina Jolie this weekend, with both Jolie and writer Simon Hattenstone doing their apparent damnedest to try to make the piece as much as possible about Jolie’s passions, her new book about the UN-guaranteed rights of children, and her work promoting the struggles and heroism of activists and refugees in areas like Syria and Afghanistan. But—especially in light of Jolie’s long custody struggles with former husband Brad Pitt over their six children, and its connection to the topic of the rights of children—it was probably inevitable that some Angelina Jolie, Famous Hollywood Actress stuff would slip in, and, probably equally inevitably, it’s the kind of stuff that’s fairly difficult to look away from once it’s in the ether.
Specifically: Jolie talks about Harvey Weinstein, who she says assaulted her early in her career, circa her role in 1988’s Playing By Heart. “I worked with him when I was young,” Jolie says, “If you get yourself out of the room, you think he attempted but didn’t, right? The truth is that the attempt and the experience of the attempt is an assault. It was beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape.” Jolie says that she did her best to warn other young women away from working with Weinstein, and that she turned down a part in The Aviator due to his involvement. Her then-husband was less willing to take similar stances, though; Jolie notes in the profile that, “Of course it hurt” when Pitt chose to star in the Weinstein-produced Inglourious Basterds, and brought Weinstein onboard as a producer on a film in 2012. “We fought about it.”
Other Pitt material in the interview is more circumspect, at least in part because the legal issues surrounding the custody fight are still ongoing—and, in part, served as the inspiration for her writing about children’s rights. “I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly,” she notes, alluding to the divorce, and her allegations of abusive behavior against Pitt. “It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.”
The end result is a messy, but striking, profile, one often forced to talk obliquely about Jolie’s personal connection to the book she’s striving to publicize and promote. (Titled Know Your Rights, and co-written by Geraldine Van Bueren QC and Amnesty International.) You can read the full piece here.
“Could have had two glasses of water with that Avatar cash.”Photo: Kate Green (Getty Images)
Hey, here’s a quick, fun math question: What’s 10 percent of $2.847 billion? If you answered “So much money that Matt Damon could have bought one of those islands where they let you hunt a guy, because who’s going to stop you, it’s your dang island,” then, congratulations: You have passed a very important class in cinematic math that Matt Damon, tragically, did not.
Because, as it turns out, that big bag of cash is exactly what Damon apparently passed on a decade back, when James Cameron came knocking asking if he might want to star in a little movie called Avatar—offering 10 percent of the profits in an effort to lure the name star on to his plucky lil’ project. But, as Damon revealed in a session at Cannes this weekend, he turned the role down, because he was committed to the Jason Bourne movies at the time, and wanted to make the “moral” choice, i.e.—the choice where you don’t end up getting $200 million for your private murder island. “I will go down in history,” Damon said in his masterclass at the film festival. “You will never meet an actor who turned down more money.”
To be fair, Damon didn’t seem to be too bothered by the missed payday, laughing about it with the audience and recalling telling the same anecdote to his pal John Krasinski, who responded by noting that, “Nothing would be different in your life if you had done Avatar, except you and me would be having this conversation in space.” Also, it meant that Sam Worthington got to play the character of Jake Sully, and while the largely unknown Worthington definitely didn’t get the same deal offered to him, it does mean we get the ongoing paradox of the planet’s most successful movie starring a guy whose face we couldn’t pick out of a lineup to save our lives.
Per Deadline, Damon also held court on a number of other topics during his panel—ostensibly in support of Stillwater, which is premiering at the festival. That includes his near-misses with directing (most notably on Manchester By The Sea), and what life is like when you’re hanging out with Brad Pitt, one of the few people on the planet more ridiculously famous than Matt Damon: “It was absolute madness,” Damon said, describing a trip with Pitt to the Monaco Grand Prix. “I got arm-barred by security and I had to say, ‘I’m with Brad!’”
