Biography of Brad PittWilliam Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor, film producer, and social activist. He became famous during the mid 1990s after starring in several major Hollywood films. Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, both of which were for his role in Twelve Monkeys (1996).
Pitt is consistently cited as one of the most attractive men alive and is regarded as a Hollywood A-lister. His former marriage to Jennifer Aniston and current relationship with Angelina Jolie have been widely covered in the world media. He is the father of four children, one biological, all of whom have also received fevered media coverage. Since his connection with Jolie, he has become increasingly involved in social issues, both domestically (in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans) and abroad (in the poverty-stricken third world).
Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the son of Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, a truck company owner.[7] Along with his brother Doug and sister Julie Neal, he grew up in Springfield, Missouri, where the family moved soon after his birth. Pitt was raised a Baptist. He attended Kickapoo High School, where he was involved in sports, debating, student government, and acting. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri - Columbia where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity.
Early career
In 1987, Pitt arrived in Beverly Hills, California. He studied under coach Roy London for six years. He first appeared in the sitcom Head Of The Class, for a while dating the show's star Robin Givens. He also guest starred in two episodes of Growing Pains. Pitt appeared as Chris in the long-running soap Another World. While auditioning for the show Our House, he was asked to read for another part, and found himself playing Shalane McCall's boyfriend Charles on the Friday night time soap Dallas. He also had a number of roles in prime-time series, such as thirtysomething, 21 Jump Street, and Freddy's Nightmares. Pitt appeared uncredited in both Less Than Zero and Charlie Sheen's No Man's Land before appearing in Cutting Class, about a maniac stalking cheerleaders. He began dating co-star Jill Schoelen.
Moderate success
In 1988, Pitt had his first starring role, in Dark Side Of The Sun, where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The movie was shot in Yugoslavia in the summer of '88 with Pitt being paid $1,523 a week for seven weeks. However, with editing nearly complete, war broke out and much of the film was lost. The film was released years later. Pitt won a part in the TV movie Too Young to Die?, about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. Pitt played the part of a drug addict, Silly Canton, who took advantage of runaway Juliette Lewis, who Pitt began dating in real life. The pair would be together for three years.
In 1991, Pitt starred as Joe Maloney in Across the Tracks in which he portrayed a high school runner with a difficult criminal brother played by Ricky Schroder. Pitt attracted broader public attention from a supporting role in Thelma & Louise where he played a small time criminal drifter in a love scene with Geena Davis.
After Thelma and Louise, Pitt starred in the low budget 1991 film Johnny Suede as an awkward dreamer who aspired to be a big-haired rock star alongside Catherine Keener and Nick Cave, directed by Tom DiCillo. Pitt had agreed to play the part before Thelma & Louise was released. After appearing in Cool World, Pitt starred in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It in 1992, for which Pitt learned fly fishing by casting off of Hollywood buildings. Then came Kalifornia in 1993, a road movie in which he played a scruffy serial killer alongside his then girlfriend Juliette Lewis and X-Files actor David Duchovny.
Personal life
Pitt dated actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Thandie Newton, Robin Givens, Juliette Lewis, and Sinitta during the 1990s.
Marriage to Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer AnistonIn 1998, Pitt met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston and married her at an enclosed wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. The couple were adamant that the ceremony would be a private affair and hired hundreds of guards to block out any attempts of invasion by the paparazzi. Only one media picture was ever released of the wedding. Not long after the wedding, Pitt sued Damiani International, the company which made the wedding ring he gave Jennifer Aniston, for selling replica "Brad and Jennifer" rings. According to Pitt, the ring was his design and was to be exclusive. Under the settlement reached in January 2002, Pitt would design jewelry for Damiani that Aniston would model in ads, and the company would stop selling the copies.
Though their marriage was, for years, considered the rare Hollywood success, rumors of trouble began circulating, and the Pitts announced their separation on January 7, 2005. As Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston drew to a close, he and Angelina Jolie were involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal in which Jolie was often painted as the "other woman," largely due to their chemistry during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. While Jolie and Pitt both denied any claims of adultery, speculations continued to mount throughout 2004 and early 2005. In an interview with Ann Curry in June 2005, Jolie explained, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."
The concept of a "troubled marriage" (and arguably his own) inspired Pitt to cooperate with Steven Klein for a photoshoot in early 2005 entitled "Domestic Bliss" for W magazine. The spread showed Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a 1963 married couple with children. Pitt expressed the desire to tell a darker, truer tale, one that explored the "unidentifiable malaise" that often haunts a seemingly happy couple. "You don't know what's wrong," he remarked, "because the marriage is everything you signed up for." For her part, Aniston later cited the shoot as evidence that Pitt has "a sensitivity chip that's missing."
Aniston filed for a divorce on March 25 the same year. The divorce was finalized on October 2, 2005.
Relationship with Angelina Jolie
Angelina JolieSpeculation of a relationship between the two began to be confirmed with the first private paparazzi photos of Jolie and Pitt emerged April 9, 2005 (and were reportedly bought for $500,000). They showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer, the pair were seen together with increasing frequency, and the entertainment media dubbed the couple "Brangelina". Two months later, the highly-anticipated July 2005 issue of W magazine hit newsstands, featuring Pitt and Jolie posed as a couple.
In July 2005 he accompanied Jolie to Ethiopia, where Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl named Zahara; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt the girl together. In December 2005 it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie's two children as his (as part of legal requirements), classified advertisements in the Los Angeles paper Daily Commerce announcing the name change request. On January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request. The children's legal surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt". During a charity trip to Haiti with Wyclef Jean, rumors began to circulate that Jolie was pregnant. On January 11, 2006 Jolie confirmed to People magazine that she was pregnant with Pitt's child. On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter, named Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, at the Cottage Medi-Clinic Hospital in Swakopmund, Namibia by the couple's Los Angeles obstetrician, assisted by local staff. Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter would have a Namibian passport. Public interest in the child was immense. In an August 2006 survey, 41 percent of participating 18 to 24-year-old American adults correctly identified that the couple had named their baby Shiloh. Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to take these extremely valuable snapshots. People magazine paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide - the most expensive celebrity image of all time. olie and Pitt donated all the earnings to an undisclosed charity. On July 26, 2006 Madame Tussauds of New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it is the first infant re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds.
Pitt and Jolie are not married. In 2006, Pitt said, "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."
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