Brad Pitt not only gave up alcohol following his split from Angelina Jolie, he also stopped smoking cigarettes during the pandemic while focusing on his health.
Speaking with GQ for a new cover story, the actor says he came to the realization that he couldn’t just cut back on them, but had to quit altogether. “I don’t have that ability to do just one or two a day,” he told the publication. “It’s not in my makeup. I’m all in. And I’m going to drive into the ground. I’ve lost my privileges.”
“I’m just at that age when nothing good comes from it,” he added.
Pitt also touched briefly on going to Alcoholics Anonymous for a year and a half after Jolie filed for divorce.
“I had a really cool men’s group here that was really private and selective, so it was safe,” he explained. “Because I’d seen things of other people who had been recorded while they were spilling their guts, and that’s just atrocious to me.”
Throughout the sprawling interview, the actor reveals he believes he has prosopagnosia, better known as face blindness — which leaves him struggling to remember people he’s already met at parties. He also speaks quite a bit about loneliness and depression.
“I always felt very alone in my life. Alone growing up as a kid, alone even out here, and it’s really not till recently that I have had a greater embrace of my friends and family,” he shared. “What’s that line, it was either Rilke or Einstein, believe it or not, but it was something about when you can walk with the paradox, when you carry real pain and real joy simultaneously, this is maturity, this is growth.”
“I was always moving with the currents, drifting in a way, and onto the next,” he continued. “I think I spent years with a low-grade depression, and it’s not until coming to terms with that, trying to embrace all sides of self — the beauty and the ugly — that I’ve been able to catch those moments of joy.”
Speaking vaguely about his future and creative career, Pitt said, “I consider myself on my last leg, this last semester or trimester” — and has been asking himself, “What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?”
He also hilariously shared that one of the things that kept him busy somewhat recently was a hunt for gold on his Château Miraval estate in Provence, France — after being told that millions of dollars worth of gold had been stashed on its grounds during the Crusades.
“I got obsessed. Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all,” said Pitt, who allegedly searched the property with radar equipment to no avail. “Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up, because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.”
He said he felt “pretty foolish in the end,” after the man who told him about the hidden moolah was just trying to secure an investment from Pitt. “It was just the hunt that was exciting,” he added.
Check out the full profile here. Pitt’s next film, “Bullet Train,” hits theaters on August 5.
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