Brad Pitt has opened up about the “mistakes” he has made in life, his alcohol issues and the fact he didn’t cry for 20 years.
The actor, 55, said he was learning to forgive himself for the things “he wasn’t proud of” and he believed it was how people moved on from mistakes that “defined a person”.
In a candid conversation with actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, 81, for Interview magazine, Pitt added: “I’m realising … that I value those missteps, because they led to some wisdom, which led to something else. You can’t have one without the other.”
He told Hopkins, his co-star in 1994 western Legends Of The Fall and 1998’s Meet Joe Black: “The next move, what you do after the mistake, is what really defines a person … We don’t as a culture seem to stick around to see what that person’s next step is. And that’s the part I find so much more invigorating and interesting.”
Pitt, who attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the time of his separation from wife Angelina Jolie, said he drank to “escape”. He said, at that point, to “some degree” it was necessary.
The couple split in 2016 after two years of marriage and more than 10 years together. They have six children.
Pitt said he had been trying to reconnect with his emotions in recent years.
“I am quite famously a not-crier,” he explained. “I hadn’t cried in, like, 20 years, and now I find myself, at this latter stage, much more moved — moved by my kids, moved by friends, moved by the news.”
He added that his family had given him “purpose”. saying: “I’m human. We’re human, we want purpose, we want meaning in our lives. But to attain that, the key is two things: staying creative and being with the people you love.”
