Brad Pitt quit college two weeks short of a degree to chase films
A journalism student from Missouri realised movies were not made anywhere near home, so with a fortnight of coursework left he dropped out and drove to Los Angeles. His first starring film then sat unreleased for nine years after war broke out where it was shot.
William Bradley Pitt was born on 18 December 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to a trucking company owner and a school counsellor, and grew up in Springfield, Missouri, in a conservative Southern Baptist household. At Kickapoo High School he played golf, swam, debated and sang in musicals, then studied journalism with an advertising focus at the University of Missouri from 1982. In Los Angeles he took lessons from the coach Roy London and paid the bills with odd jobs, and looked up to actors like Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke and Gary Oldman.
From 1987 he collected uncredited film parts and guest spots on soaps and sitcoms, including four episodes of Dallas and a Pringles advert. His first lead came in The Dark Side of the Sun, a Yugoslav-American production in which he played a young American taken to the Adriatic to cure a skin condition. The outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence shelved it until 1997, so the horror film Cutting Class, in 1989, became the first Pitt movie to reach cinemas.
Recognition arrived in 1991 as the charming drifter J.D. in Thelma and Louise. Pitt considered his turn in A River Runs Through It among his weakest, although the Los Angeles Times called it career-making. His manic performance in 12 Monkeys won a Golden Globe and his first Oscar nomination, and for Fight Club in 1999 he let chips be taken out of his front teeth, repaired after filming. That film disappointed at the box office and became a cult classic once it reached DVD.
He later co-founded Plan B Entertainment in 2001 and won Best Picture as a producer for 12 Years a Slave, then an acting Oscar for playing a stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Films he has led have taken more than $7.5 billion worldwide.
Source: Brad Pitt
