Brad Pitt may look like the perfect male specimen.
But the actor has admitted in a revealing new interview that he’s anything but the perfect human being.
In a wide-ranging discussion with The New York Times, the 55-year-old actor told the publication that he sought important personal help after Angela Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016.
Meaning what, exactly?
He entered Alcoholics Anonymous for a year and a half.
“I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” Pitt says, adding in this feature:
“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard. It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.”
To be clear, Pitt never uses the word alcoholic in this interview.
But we’ve never known anyone to enter AA who didn’t confess to having this sort of major problem with drinking.
Despite his fame, Pitt told the newspaper no one in the group sold his story to tabloids.
“It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he says. “There’s great value in that.”
For several weeks after Jolie filed to end her marriage three years ago, rumors spread about Pitt’s substance abuse.
He was even accused of getting physical with his oldest son on board a private plane, presumably, in part, because he was drunk.
While the FBI looked into this allegation and never charged Pitt with a crime, the star did talk openly in May 2017 about drinking too much.
“I was boozing too much,” Pitt told GQ back then. “It’s just become a problem. And I’m really happy it’s been half a year now, which is bittersweet, but I’ve got my feelings in my fingertips again.”
The actor even joked — although it wasn’t really a joke — that he was a “professional” drinking during this previous interview.
Elsewhere in this Times article, Pitt acknowledges having gone through a lot with his family, never mentioning Jolie by name,
“The fact is, we all carry pain, grief and loss. We spend most of our time hiding it, but it’s there, it’s in you,” he explains.
Pitt and Jolie reached a custody agreement in late 2018 following a lengthy legal battle.
While the two “have joint physical and legal custody of the children,” Maddox is free to make his own decisions due to his age, an insider told Us Weekly at the time.
Sources have said that Pitt rarely see any of his six kids, but perhaps this will change along with his new perspective.
“In the ’90s, all that attention really threw me. It was really uncomfortable for me, the cacophony of expectations and judgments,” he admits now.
“I really became a bit of a hermit and just bonged myself into oblivion.”
Now, however?
Pitt appreciates the necessity of vulnerability and identifying your own weaknesses.
“I’m grateful that there was such an emphasis on being capable and doing things on your own with humility, but what’s lacking about that is taking inventory of yourself,” he says.
“It’s almost a denial of this other part of you that is weak and goes through self-doubts, even though those are human things we all experience.
“Certainly, it’s my belief that you can’t really know yourself until you identify and accept those things.”
That’s great and all — but is he getting back together with Jennifer Aniston or what?!?
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