Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the Ridley Scott road film Thelma & Louise (1991). Pitt emerged as a star taking on leading roles in films such as the drama A River Runs Through It (1992), the western Legends of the Fall (1994), the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), the crime thriller Seven (1995), the cult film Fight Club (1999), and the crime comedy Snatch (2000).
He cemented his leading man status by starring in blockbusters, such as the Ocean's film trilogy (2001โ2007), Troy (2004) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). His other major successes include Inglourious Basterds (2009), World War Z (2013), Bullet Train (2022) and F1 (2025).
Pitt earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in the science fiction drama 12 Monkeys (1995), the fantasy romance The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and the sports drama Moneyball (2011). For his portrayal of a stuntman in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He also starred in acclaimed films such as Babel (2006), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), The Tree of Life (2011), Fury (2014), The Big Short (2015), Ad Astra (2019) and Babylon (2022).
In 2001, Pitt co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment. As a producer, he won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave (2013) and was nominated for Moneyball (2011) and The Big Short (2015). An influential figure in popular culture, Pitt appeared on Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list from 2006 to 2008, and the Time 100 list in 2007.
Regarded as a sex symbol, Pitt was named People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1995 and 2000. Pitt's relationships have been subject to widespread media attention, particularly his marriages to actresses Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie.
Early life
William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to William Alvin Pitt, the proprietor of a trucking company, and Jane Etta (nรฉe Hillhouse; 1940โ2025), a school counselor. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where Pitt lived with his younger siblings, Doug Pitt (born 1966) and Julie Neal (nรฉe Pitt; born 1969).
Born into a conservative Christian household, he was raised as Southern Baptist and later "oscillate[d] between agnosticism and atheism". He later returned to a belief "that we're all connected".
Pitt attended Kickapoo High School, where he was a member of the golf, swimming, and tennis teams. He participated in the school's Key and Forensics clubs, in school debates, and in musicals. Pitt enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1982, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. As graduation approached, Pitt did not feel ready to settle down.
He loved films, and since films were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Two weeks before completing the coursework for a degree, Pitt left the university and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting lessons and worked odd jobs. He has named Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke as his early acting heroes.
Career
Early work (1987โ1993)
While struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from acting coach Roy London. His acting career began in 1987, with uncredited roles in the films No Way Out, No Man's Land and Less than Zero. In May of the same year, he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World.
That November, he had guest appearances on the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains. He appeared in four episodes of the CBS primetime series Dallas between December 1987 and February 1988 as Randy, the boyfriend of Charlotte (played by Shalane McCall). Later in 1988, Pitt made a guest appearance on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street and appeared in a Pringles commercial directed by Lawrence Bridges.
The same year, he had his first leading film role in the YugoslavianโAmerican co-production The Dark Side of the Sun, as a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The film was shelved at the outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence, and was not released until 1997.
Pitt made two film appearances in 1989: the first in a supporting role in the comedy Happy Together, and the second in a major role in the horror film Cutting Class, which was the first of Pitt's films to reach theaters. That year, he made guest appearances on the television series Head of the Class, Freddy's Nightmares, Thirtysomething, and Growing Pains.
Pitt appeared as Billy Canton, a drug addict who takes advantage of a young runaway (played by Juliette Lewis) in the 1990 NBC television film Too Young to Die?, the story of an abused teenager sentenced to death for a murder. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described Pitt as a "magnificent slimeball" in his role as the "hoody" and "really scary" boyfriend of Lewis' character.
The same year, Pitt co-starred in six episodes of the short-lived Fox drama Glory Days and had a supporting role in the HBO television film The Image. His next appearance came in the 1991 film Across the Tracks, in which he portrays Joe Maloney, a high school runner. The same year he featured in a Levi's jeans commercial.
Pitt attracted wider recognition in his supporting role in Ridley Scott's 1991 film Thelma & Louise. He plays J.D., a small-time criminal who befriends Thelma (Geena Davis). His love scene with Davis has been cited as the event that defined Pitt as a sex symbol. Pitt subsequently starred in Johnny Suede (1991) a low-budget film about an aspiring rock star, and the live-action/animated fantasy film Cool World (1992), both of which fared poorly at the box office and with critics.
Pitt appeared as Paul Maclean in the 1992 biographical film A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford. Although Pitt thought his portrayal of Maclean was one of his weakest performances, the Los Angeles Times described it as a career-making performance. Jeff Giles of Rotten Tomatoes said Pitt's portrayal proved he could be more than a "cowboy-hatted hunk." In 1993, Pitt reunited with Juliette Lewis for the road film Kalifornia, playing the serial killer husband of her character.
His performance was described by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone as "outstanding, all boyish charm and then a snort that exudes pure menace." Pitt also garnered attention for a brief appearance in the cult hit True Romance as a stoner named Floyd. He finished the year by winning a ShoWest Award for Male Star of Tomorrow.
Breakthrough (1994โ1998)
In 1994, Pitt portrayed the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the horror film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire. Pitt was part of an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. Despite winning two MTV Movie Awards at the 1995 ceremony, his performance was poorly received by critics.[citation needed] Matt Zoller Seitz of the Dallas Observer felt Pitt was dull in the role because he failed to display the self-awareness and inner torment necessary for the character.
Pitt next starred in Legends of the Fall (1994), based on the novel Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison and set in the American West during the first four decades of the twentieth century. He portrays Tristan Ludlow, son of Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins). For his performance, Pitt received his first Golden Globe Award nomination, in the Best Actor category.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Pitt's diffident mix of acting and attitude works to such heartthrob perfection it's a shame the film's superficiality gets in his way." Although the film received mixed reviews, the Deseret News predicted that Legends of the Fall would solidify Pitt's reputation as a lead actor.
In 1995, Pitt starred alongside Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey in the crime thriller Seven, playing a detective on the trail of a serial killer who preys on people he considers guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pitt said the role would expand his acting horizons, expressing an intention to move on from playing the "pretty boy" to playing someone with flaws." Variety wrote that Pitt did a "determined, energetic, creditable job" in his role, and that his performance "was screen acting at its best".
Following the box-office success of Seven, Pitt played the psychotic anarchist Jeffrey Goines in Terry Gilliam's 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys. The film received predominantly positive reviews, with Pitt praised in particular. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called Twelve Monkeys "fierce and disturbing" and remarked on Pitt's "startlingly frenzied performance", concluding that he "electrifies Jeffrey with a weird magnetism that becomes important later in the film." He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film and received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
The following year, he appeared in the legal drama Sleepers (1996), based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name. The film received mixed reviews. In the 1997 film The Devil's Own Pitt starred, opposite Harrison Ford, as Irish Republican Army terrorist Rory Devany, a role for which he was required to learn an Irish accent.
Critical opinion was divided on his accent; "Pitt finds the right tone of moral ambiguity, but at times his Irish brogue is too convincing โ it's hard to understand what he's saying", wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. The Charleston Gazette opined that it had favored Pitt's accent over the movie. The Devil's Own grossed $140 million worldwide.
Later that year, he led as Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in the Jean-Jacques Annaud film Seven Years in Tibet. Pitt trained for months for the role, which demanded significant mountain climbing and trekking practice, including rock climbing in California and the European Alps with his co-star David Thewlis.
Pitt had the lead role in 1998's fantasy romance film Meet Joe Black. He portrayed a personification of death inhabiting the body of a young man to learn what it is like to be human. The film received mixed reviews, and many were critical of Pitt's performance. According to Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, Pitt was unable to "make an audience believe that he knows all the mysteries of death and eternity." Roger Ebert remarked, "Pitt is a fine actor, but this performance is a miscalculation."
Rise to prominence (1999โ2003)
In 1999, Pitt portrayed Tyler Durden in Fight Club, a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name, directed by David Fincher. Pitt prepared for the part with lessons in boxing, taekwondo, and grappling. To look the part, Pitt consented to the removal of pieces of his front teeth which were restored when filming ended.
While promoting Fight Club, Pitt said that the film explored not taking one's aggressions out on someone else but to "have an experience, take a punch more and see how you come out on the other end." Fight Club premiered at the 1999 Venice International Film Festival. Despite divided critical opinion on the film as a whole, Pitt's performance was widely praised.
Paul Clinton of CNN noted the risky yet successful nature of the film, while Variety remarked upon Pitt's ability to be "cool, charismatic and more dynamically physical, perhaps than [...] his breakthrough role in Thelma and Louise". In spite of a worse-than-expected box office performance, Fight Club became a cult classic after its DVD release in 2000.
Pitt was cast as an Irish Traveller boxer with a barely intelligible accent in Guy Ritchie's 2000 gangster film Snatch. Several reviewers were critical of Snatch; however, most praised Pitt. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said Pitt was "ideally cast as an Irishman whose accent is so thick even Brits can't understand him", going on to say that, before Snatch, Pitt had been "shackled by roles that called for brooding introspection, but recently he has found his calling in black comic outrageousness and flashy extroversion;" while Amy Taubin of The Village Voice claimed that "Pitt gets maximum comic mileage out of a one-joke role".
The following year Pitt starred opposite Julia Roberts in the romantic comedy The Mexican, a film that garnered a range of reviews but enjoyed box office success. Pitt's next role, in 2001's $143 million-grossing Cold War thriller Spy Game, was as Tom Bishop, an operative of the CIA's Special Activities Division, mentored by Robert Redford's character.
Mark Holcomb of Salon.com enjoyed the film, although he noted that neither Pitt nor Redford provided "much of an emotional connection for the audience".
On November 22, 2001, Pitt made a guest appearance in the eighth season of the television series Friends, playing a man with a grudge against Rachel Green, played by Jennifer Aniston (to whom Pitt was married at the time). For this performance, he was nominated for an Emmy Award. In December 2001, Pitt played Rusty Ryan in the heist film Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack original.
He joined an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcรญa, and Julia Roberts. Well received by critics, Ocean's Eleven was highly successful at the box office, earning $450 million worldwide.
Pitt appeared in two episodes of MTV's reality series Jackass in February 2002, first running through the streets of Los Angeles with several cast members in gorilla suits, and in a subsequent episode participating in his own staged abduction. In the same year, Pitt had a cameo role in George Clooney's directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
He took on his first voice-acting roles in 2003, speaking as the titular character of the DreamWorks animated film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and playing Boomhauer's brother, Patch, in an episode of the animated television series King of the Hill.
Worldwide recognition (2004โ2008)
Pitt had two major film roles in 2004, starring as Achilles in Troy, and reprising his role, Rusty Ryan, in the sequel Ocean's Twelve. He spent six months sword training before the filming of Troy, based on the Iliad. An on-set injury to his Achilles tendon delayed production on the picture for several weeks.
Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post stated that Pitt excelled at such a demanding role. Troy was the first film produced by Plan B Entertainment, a film production company he had founded two years earlier with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures. Ocean's Twelve earned $362 million worldwide, and Pitt and Clooney's dynamic was described by CNN's Paul Clinton as "the best male chemistry since Paul Newman and Robert Redford." In 2005, Pitt starred as John Smith in the Doug Liman-directed action comedy Mr. & Mrs.
Smith, in which a bored married couple discover that each is an assassin for a competing agency. The feature received reasonable reviews but was generally lauded for the chemistry between Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who played his character's wife Jane Smith. The Star Tribune noted that "while the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry". Mr. & Mrs. Smith earned $478 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest hits of 2005.
