Brad Pitt Ponders His 'Last Semester' in Hollywood

Actor talks depression, recovery, self-analysis, and embracing 'all sides of self' with 'GQ'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 23, 2022 7:05 PM CDT
Brad Pitt Ponders His 'Last Semester' in Hollywood
Brad Pitt, winner of the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Brad Pitt is on his "last leg," the 58-year-old actor tells GQ in a cover story interview that touches on what he calls his "last semester" in the movie business, sobriety, and dream interpretation. He describes a recurring nightmare in which stalkers emerge from the shadows to stab him. "This stopped a year or two ago only when I started going straight back into the dream and asking simply why?" he says. "My interpretation of the stabbing dreams were on the surface about fears, feeling unsafe, completely alone—but beneath it all they mostly seemed to be about buried needs—those aspects of self that weren’t allowed to bloom as a child—like healthy anger, individuality, or especially a voice."

Perhaps that's why "I just want to always make. If I'm not making, I'm dying in some way." Due to appear in 2022 films including Bullet Train and Babylon, he's also CEO and owner of production company Plan B Entertainment. But he can foresee a time when he leaves Hollywood. "I consider myself on my last leg, this last semester or trimester," he tells interviewer and author Ottessa Moshfegh. "What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?" It seems with "radical accountability" in mind. Pitt describes how he got sober and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a year and a half after Angelina Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, then gave up cigarettes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's been working on his mental health, too, after spending "years with a low-grade depression." "I always felt very alone in my life," he tells the magazine, adding he believes he suffers from prosopagnosia or face blindness, an inability to recognize or differentiate faces, which may give the impression that he's distant or self-absorbed. "It's really not till recently that I have had a greater embrace of my friends and family," he says. "I think joy's been a newer discovery, later in life," he adds. (Read the full interview.)

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