Denton County Living Well Magazine July/August 2019 | Page 13

Columbia Pictures
ABOVE: A behind the scenes photo with Robert Redford on the set of A River Runs
Through It.
AT LEFT: Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio travel back to 1969 in Quentin Tarantino’s Once
Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Scheduled to release later this month.
my kids, being subjected to it, and their friends get-
ting ideas from it. And of course it’s not done with
any kind of delicacy or insight—it’s done to sell. And
so you know the most sensational sells, and that’s
what they’ll be subjected to, and that pains me.”
Chronicled ad nauseam, the demise of the Pitt/Jo-
lie marriage has dominated the covers of magazines
since 2016 and overshadowed Pitt’s fine work in films
and beyond. According to Esquire, while he hesitates
to identify himself as an actor, “because he considers
himself primarily an artist, a doer, a maker, a crafts-
man, a man who felt the first thrill of artifice not on-
stage but in high school shop class, drawing up plans,”
he’s drawn to stories with a different point of view.
“Films were a portal into different worlds for me, cul-
tures I had never seen before and was absolutely tak-
en with. I was also taken with the power of films to
define things for me that I’d not been able to define
for myself, So I became an actor,” he told Parade.
Evident in the projects he takes on, Pitt isn’t afraid to take
on challenges post Jolie. Indeed, his next film is one tailor
fit to Pitt’s aesthetic. Slated for a July 26 release, Once
Upon a Time…in Hollywood, is being hailed as Pitt’s finest
in years. From the mind of Quentin Tarantino, the film
follows a group of Hollywood types living in Los Angeles
in 1969, the year the Manson family went on a murder
spree. Pitt plays Cliff Booth, a stuntman whose glory days
are numbered, while Leonardo DiCaprio plays his pal Rick
Dalton, a struggling television actor who happens to live
next to murder victims Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.
“Quentin Tarantino is the last purveyor of cool. If you
land in one of his films, you know you’re in great
hands,” said Pitt, who previously worked with Taran-
tino on the movie Inglourious Basterds. The high-
ly anticipated movie is the first time Brad Pitt has
shared the screen with DiCaprio. “And doing this
with Leo was really cool and a rare opportunity.”
As Pitt is wont to do, he switches gear this fall with
the sci-fi drama Ad Astra, where he plays astronaut
Roy McBride, who’s compelled to explore the un-
known edges of space. It’s a compulsion to explore
that drives Pitt in his everyday life; it’s the same
“itch” that made him pack up and leave Missouri.
“Seeing the world is the best education you can get. You
see sorrow, and you also see great spirit and will to sur-
vive. But you have to go off the beaten path of St. Bart’s
Island, Rome, Paris, wander off the path and go beyond
that,” according to Pitt. “It is where you meet people
and hear personal stories. It is a huge eye-opener.”
DENTON COUNTY Living Well Magazine | JULY/AUGUST 2019
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