Brad Pitt

With looks that have inspired countless People magazine covers, Internet shrines, and paparazzi blitzkreigs, Brad Pitt is an actor whose very name inspires drooling platitudes, more about male beauty than about acting. Following his breakthrough as the wickedly charming drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind in Thelma && Louise (1991), Pitt became one of Hollywood's hottest properties and spent most of the 1990s being lauded as everything from Robert Redford's heir apparent to the Sexiest Man Alive.

Pitt's ascension to his celluloid throne was a long and sometimes frustrating one, however. The son of a trucking company manager, Pitt was born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, OK. Raised in Missouri as the oldest of three children, and brought up in a strict Baptist household, Pitt enrolled at the University of Missouri, following high school graduation, studying journalism and advertising. However, after discovering his love of acting, he dropped out of college two credit hours before he could graduate and moved to Hollywood. Fearful of his parents' reaction, he told them he was going to Pasadena to study at the Art Center College of Design. Once in California, Pitt took acting classes and supported himself with a variety of odd jobs that included chauffeuring strippers to private parties, waiting tables, and wearing a giant chicken suit for a local restaurant chain. His first break came when he landed a small recurring role on Dallas, and a part in a teenage-slasher movie, Cutting Class (1989) (opposite Roddy McDowall), marked his inauspicious entrance into the world of feature films. The previous year, Pitt's acting experience had been limited to the TV movie A Stoning in Fulgham County (1988).

1991 marked the end of Pitt's obscurity, as it was the year he made his appearance in Thelma && Louise. After becoming famous practically overnight, Pitt unfortunately chose to channel his newfound celebrity into Ralph Bakshi's disastrous animation/live action combo Cool World (1992). Following this misstep, Pitt took a starring role in director Tom Di Cillo's independent film Johnny Suede. The film failed to score with critics or at the box office and Pitt's documented clashes with the director allegedly inspired Di Cillo to pattern the character of the vain and egotistical Chad Palomino, in his 1995 Living in Oblivion, after the actor. Pitt's next venture, Robert Redford's lyrical fly-fishing drama A River Runs Through It (2002), gave the actor a much-needed chance to prove that he had talent in addition to physical appeal, and doubtless drew on Pitt's religious upbringing (casting, as it did, the fair-haired actor as a minister's son),

Following his performance in Redford's film, Pitt appeared in Kalifornia and True Romance (both 1993), two road movies featuring fallen women and violent sociopaths. Pitt's next major role did not arrive until early 1994, when he was cast as the lead of the gorgeously photographed Legends of the Fall. As he did in A River Runs Through It, Pitt portrayed a free-spirited, strong-willed brother, but this time had greater opportunity to further develop his enigmatic character. Following the film's release, People magazine dubbed him the Sexiest Man Alive. Later that same year, fans watched in anticipation as Pitt exchanged his outdoorsy persona for the brooding, gothic posturing of Anne Rice's tortured vampire Louis in the film adaptation of -Interview With the Vampire. Starring opposite Tom Cruise, Pitt enjoyed the fame generated by the film's success.

Pitt next starred in the forgettable romantic comedy The Favor (1994) before going on to play a rookie detective investigating a series of gruesome crimes opposite Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995). In 1997, Pitt received a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a visionary mental patient in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys; the same year, Pitt attempted an Austrian accent and put on a backpack to play mountaineer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet. The film met with mixed reviews and generated a fair amount of controversy, thanks in part to the revelation that the real-life Harrar had in fact been a Nazi. Furthermore, due to its pro-Tibetan stance, the film also resulted in Pitt's permanent banishment from China. Following Tibet, Pitt traveled in a less inflammatory direction with Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own, in which he starred with fellow screen icon Harrison Ford. Despite this seemingly faultless pairing, the film was a relative critical and box-office failure. In 1998, Pitt tried his hand at romantic drama, portraying Death in Meet Joe Black, the most expensive non-special effects film ever made. The film, which weighed in at three hours in length, met with excessively mixed reviews, although more than one critic remarked that Pitt certainly made a very appealing representative of the afterlife.

Pitt's penchant for quirk was prevalent with his cameo in the surreal comic fantasy Being John Malkovich (1999) and carried over into his role as Tyler Durden, the mysterious and anti-materialistic soap salesman in David Fincher's controversial Fight Club the same year. The odd characterizations didn't let up with his appearance as the audibly indecipherable pugilist in Guy Ritchie's eagerly anticipated follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch (2000).

Popularitas Pitt diawali dari perannya sebagai J.D dalam serial TV, THELMA & LOUISE pada 1991, bersama Susan Sarandon dan Geena Davis.

Pitt kini menjalani kehidupan asmaranya dengan selebriti papan atas Angelina Jolie, setelah meninggalkan istrinya aktris Jennifer Aniston yang dinikahinya pada 29 Juli 2000.

Perpisahan Pitt-Aniston terjadi setelah setelah Pitt terlibat 'cinta lokasi' dengan Jolie saat syuting film, MR. AND MRS SMITH pada 2004.

Selain Aniston dan Jolie, beberapa wanita pernah menjalin asmara dengan Pitt, di antaranya aktris Gwyneth Paltrow, Juliette Lewis dan Robin Givens.

Bersama Jolie, Pitt memperoleh anak kandung pertamanya pada 27 Mei 2006 dan diberi nama Shiloh Nouval Jolie-Pitt. Selain anak kandung, Shiloh, masih ada anak adopsi Jolie yakni, Maddox dan Zahara.

Pitt dan Jolie kembali mengadopsi anak dari Vietnam pada Maret 2007, seorang anak laki-laki berusia tiga tahun dan diberi nama Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt. Keluarga pasangan ini semakin ramai, ketika pada 12 Juli 2008 Jolie kembali melahirkan bayi kembarnya dan diberi nama Knox Leon dan Vivienne Marcheline di Prancis.

Akting Pitt kembali diperhitungkan setelah ia memerankan tokoh Benjamin Button dengan apik di film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Bahkan lewat perannya di film terbarunya ini, Pitt dinominasikan sebagai aktor terbaik di Piala Oscar.

Popularitasnya sebagai aktor papan atas Hollywood, membuat Pitt akhirnya dicalonkan sebagai calon walikota New Orleans. Selain karena pamornya sebagai selebritis, juga karena kepeduliannya pada korban badai Katrina.


♥ BOA