'I want her approval. Angie is a force... I want her to be proud of her man': Brad Pitt on guns, violence and THAT wedding



A gloriously opinionated Brad Pitt speaks his mind on gun laws, gay marriage, his growing role as a movie mogul – and why he’ll never be hip again

'America is a country founded on guns... It's very strange but I feel better having a gun,' said Brad Pitt

In his own colourful phrase, Brad Pitt has always been ‘an opinionated b******’, whether supporting gay marriage or blaming the recession on rampant greed.



As for violence in films, it’s a subject Hollywood is usually happy to avoid – but not Pitt.



His latest film, Killing Them Softly, which he also produced, is a very cool but very violent thriller.



The first time we met for this interview, it had just received a standing ovation at Cannes and he readily defended the graphic scenes.



‘It’s a violent world we live in,’ he said.



‘I don’t agree with trying to hide that or cover it up.’



A few weeks later, James Holmes shot 12 people dead and wounded 58 others at a screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado.



A debate raged in the media about to what extent screen violence was to blame, along with calls for a review of U.S. gun laws.



At Cannes, I was struck by the strength of Pitt’s views. When we next met, in England three weeks after the killings, I asked if he’d changed his mind on film violence.



‘No. I absolutely don’t believe you can put sanctions or shackles on what is made. Nor do I want to pretend the world is different than what we witnessed that night.



‘Does it contribute to a sick mind? Yes, probably. What can we do about it? It’s a very interesting question. I see society, and every one of us is a part of that society. I don’t have the answer to that. I just know that you can’t start burning books and squashing ideas.’

Controversially for one of Hollywood’s leading liberals, he doesn’t believe U.S. gun laws should be changed.



‘America is a country founded on guns. It’s in our DNA. It’s very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel the house is completely safe, if I don’t have one hidden somewhere. That’s my thinking, right or wrong.



‘I got my first BB gun (a type of air gun) when I was in nursery school. I got my first shotgun by first grade (aged six), I had shot a handgun by third grade (aged eight) and I grew up in a pretty sane environment.



'I really feel like I've hit the lottery,' said Brad

‘I was in the UK when the shootings happened and I did hear the discussion about gun control start again, and as far as I know it petered out as it always does.



‘It’s just something with us. To turn around and ask us to give up our guns... I don’t know, we’re too afraid that we’re going to give up ours and the bad guys are still going to get theirs. It’s just in our thinking. I’m telling you, we don’t know America without guns.’



As he approaches the landmark of his 50th birthday next year, Pitt is a ‘force’ (a term he’ll use to describe wife-to-be Angelina Jolie) to be reckoned with.



His reputation as a film producer rivals his finest acting performances.



Unlike the young actor of the Nineties – too pretty and too famous for his own good, ‘sitting on the couch, holding a joint, hiding out’ – Pitt is now firmly in the driving seat, an unconventional Hollywood power player.



There is, he says assuredly, no mid-life crisis looming, even though his goatee has streaks of silver.



‘I think if you get to this age with a family around you and you’re doing a job that you enjoy there’s a sense that you’re in the right place at the right time. Where I am now feels right.’

His production company, founded in 2002, is called Plan B – not to be confused with the British rapper. Does Pitt know him?



‘I’m afraid not,’ he laughs. ‘I’m 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that’s it. I don’t think I’ll ever be hip again!’



But the truth is he makes very hip films. Plan B’s remarkably successful roster includes



The Departed (a Best Picture Oscar winner), A Mighty Heart (with Jolie as murdered journalist Daniel Pearl’s widow), cult comic book adaptation Kick-Ass, Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life (which won last year’s Cannes Palme D’Or) and Moneyball, which gave Pitt his third Oscar nomination.



After Killing Them Softly, Pitt plans to make Blonde, a more ‘visual, less dialogue-driven psychological study’ of Marilyn Monroe. Naomi Watts is one of several actresses in contention.



‘Plan B is really a little garage band of three people and our mandate has been to help get difficult material, that might not otherwise get made, to the screen and to work with directors we respect,’ he says. The swish office in LA has become a storage room because he never uses it.



'Angie is a force, she cares deeply. I want her to be proud of her man,' said Brad

‘It’s a rule of the band that if any one of the three champions a project we all support that person, whether we feel the same way or not. I’ve always been an opinionated b******. I want to make movies that say something about our time, about who we are.

'We get to contribute to the discussion and that’s pretty cool. I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to contribute.’



The film Killing Them Softly is a perfect example.



Pitt first became interested in director Andrew Dominik’s tale of cash-strapped hit men in 2007 ‘when the whole mortgage scandal was being uncovered’.



He plays Jackie Cogan, a hitman who prefers to conduct business at a distance (‘not close enough for feelings’) to avoid hearing victims beg for their lives and is hired to investigate the robbery of a Mob-protected poker game.



As complications occur, work is subcontracted to the less-than-competent Mickey (The Sopranos’ James Gandolfini), until a climactic bloodbath just as Barack Obama secures election victory.



Cogan says: ‘America is not a country, it’s a business.’



‘Violence, murder, being killed are unfortunate outcomes of the business of crimes,’ says Pitt.



‘But all business can be Darwinian and cutthroat, so for me the killings are metaphorical. A lot of people were losing their homes, it was very upsetting.



'Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it’s hard to make your peace with.’



The recession touched even Pitt.

‘Our whole deal structures, which are still lucrative, have been adjusted to create bigger safety nets for the people putting the money forward for films. It used to be you could make much more of a Lotto kind of score, at least on big films. Now it’s become a different kind of beast altogether.’



Twenty-six years on from the ‘feckless’ (his word) Missouri boy arriving in LA with $300 in his jeans and a change of clothes stashed in the boot of his car, Pitt’s Southern drawl remains as thick as syrup.



As he arrives for our exclusive interview, there’s a languid physicality to his 5ft 11in frame contributing to the unique onscreen alchemy that launched him as the irresistible grifter in Thelma & Louise back in 1991.



Brad and Angelina have six children: Maddox, 11; Ethiopian Zahara Marley, seven; Shiloh, six, their first biological daughter; Pax, eight; and biological twins, Knox and Vivienne, aged four

A white shirt, under a grey, pinstripe suit, is unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He still exudes movie-star chic unlike any other actor, and remains the independent spirit I first met at the Toronto Film Festival in 1997.



The bachelor of 34 had been linked to Hollywood actresses including Gwyneth Paltrow and Juliette Lewis. The excitement around him was tangible.



When we next met in New York in 2004, he was happily married – or so it appeared – to Jennifer Aniston. Pitt told me then that he tried not to take the media speculation about their relationship too seriously.



Fast-forward to Cannes 2009 for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Pitt was the most tetchy I’ve ever seen him.



He had a hangover that day: it showed. The papers were stuffed with stories that he and Jolie (whom he met while filming Mr & Mrs Smith, still married to Aniston) were about to split.



‘Yeah, we’re really miserable,’ he deadpanned.



He clearly didn’t find the rumours remotely funny.



Now, he and Jolie are engaged to be married. Their six children – a mini entourage with not a publicist in sight – flank their every move: Maddox, 11, adopted as a baby by Jolie in Cambodia before she met Pitt; Ethiopian Zahara Marley, seven, adopted by them both from an orphanage; Shiloh, six, their first biological daughter; Pax, eight, adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam; and biological twins, Knox and Vivienne, aged four.



In his latest film, Killing Them Softly, Brad plays hitman Jackie Cogan

‘I spend a lot of time thinking about how I’m raising them – what do I want to impart to them, the opportunities I need to give them – that takes up a lot of my day,’ says Pitt.

‘I think living in different places is the best education we’ve been able to give the kids. There are certain confinements that come with our lives but that side is the positive and it certainly makes up for it.’



With homes in France, LA and New Orleans, the family travel en masse to his or her film locations wherever they may be.



‘We’re so mobile. We carry our bags and pop them down in any corner, any grass field, on any picnic bench. I like having a base camp, certainly, but being mobile you strip down the accoutrements and just have what’s necessary, discard the rest. I like it that way.



‘Sometimes I have more time with the kids and sometimes the Empire (as Pitt dubs Plan B) requires more tending.



'Right now, Mama (Jolie) is working but the day always starts with breakfast, all of us together. It’s chaos and a joy. When they are young like this, it’s special, and I’m very aware they’ll be grown up before we know it. I see it already and I’m clinging on with my nails.’



Pitt says he always craved a big, chaotic family. He tells me a story of watching Saturday Night Fever.



‘I have a vivid memory of it. I had to sneak in because it was an R-rated movie and cinemas were very strict back then. You had to buy a ticket for a PG movie, act like you were going to the bathroom, and then while the ticket guy had his back turned, you’d sneak in.



‘It was this idea of a big, boisterous, gregarious, New York family that I liked, all hitting and yelling at each other. It seemed ferocious but there was a lot of love in it. They related to each other. I was really affected by it.



‘I think it has to do with growing up in a bit of a Christian vacuum. I was taught from one book (the Bible) and one book only. It didn’t sit right. Then you hear things in songs and you start watching films that offer a broader view of the world. It made me curious. It made me want to get out and travel. I always had questions.

‘I try to pass that love of stories on to the kids. You know, at bedtime... when we were watching the Olympics, stories about the athletes. Or stories in films. That’s what we talk about.’



The discussions may be surprisingly adult.



‘I enjoy it when we sit down and share a film together… though I’m pushing the age of understanding.’



What film did they last watch together?



‘Apocalypto.’ Mel Gibson’s 18-rated violent epic about Mayan human sacrifice – really? He laughs.



‘Yeah. The films are a little beyond the grade but I’ll tell you it sparked some very interesting conversation. But the Batman massacre did make me think I can’t be completely frivolous about what I show my kids.’

Brad's character prefers to conduct business at a distance. As complications occur, work is subcontracted to the less-than-competent Mickey (The Sopranos' James Gandolfini)

The world got a hint of Pitt’s own upbringing in July: his mother wrote to a paper telling Christians not to vote for Obama because he supports ‘killing unborn babies’ and same-sex marriage – as do her son and his fiancée.



Pitt confirms reports that he and Jolie would prefer not to wed until everyone can. Same-sex marriage legislation is likely to come before the Supreme Court in October. He hopes the two events ‘come together at the same time, very quickly’ after that.



In July, Pitt and Jolie were named by police as victims of News Of The World phone hacking.



‘I had a suspicion we’d probably come up. We were a very lucrative news story for about a year and a half,’ he says, referring to when there was intense speculation that they were about to split up.



‘Whether I’m paranoid by nature or I’ve become paranoid – as a hunted animal does on the plains of Africa – I’ve always suspected. There’s always people trying to break your codes, get to your stuff… I’m not surprised.’



But he isn’t seeking sympathy.



‘I really feel like I’ve hit the lottery. The more I travel, the more I understand what opportunities I’ve had. Most people don’t have that.



‘The latitude and longitudinal lines of where you are born determine your opportunity in life, and it’s not equal. We may have been created equal, but we’re not born equal. It’s a lot to do with luck and you have to pass that on.’



This summer the family have been ensconced ‘near Windsor, if my bearings are correct,’ teases Pitt, while Jolie films Maleficent (a version of Sleeping Beauty).



‘We talk about work short term rather than a major game plan. It’s like, this interests me, let’s set the divining rod in that direction and see what we can make out of it…’



That recently led Pitt to build new homes in flood-damaged New Orleans. In film, he predicts the couple will work more behind the camera: he producing, Jolie directing.



Does he care what she thinks of his work?



‘Yes. One of the best things I’ve done is ensure my kids have a good mother. Of course I want her approval. Angie is a force, she cares deeply. I want her to be proud of her man.’



As Pitt nudges 50, there is a lot about which Angie can feel proud.

