In a recent appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Brad Pitt walks into the room with practiced affability. His graying blond hair is shaved into a buzz cut, evoking his Troy and Mr. & Mrs. Smith era. He wears light-wash jeans and a baby-blue cashmere button-up from his brand God’s True Cashmere, which receives a lengthy shout-out. Pitt discusses early career woes and navigating a shifting Hollywood landscape. They talk about “truth” and “honesty” and his time in Alcoholics Anonymous (he first met Shepard at a meeting in 2016). “I’m afraid to ask you this one, but here we go,” Shepard says 46 minutes in, “Have you ever heard this Cary Grant quote, ‘Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.’ You relate to that at all?” Pitt stumbles momentarily, his eyes gazing at the ceiling, “Maybe in the early years. I don’t know. I don’t think much about perception anymore.”
But Pitt’s carefully choreographed press tour for F1: The Movie says otherwise. Continuing to work with crisis-management publicist Matthew Hiltzik, who has represented Johnny Depp (and whose protéges went on to represent Justin Baldoni and work in Trump’s White House), Pitt has made a concerted effort to reestablish himself as an emblem of unaffected, undiluted movie-star cool with just a hint of vulnerability. Yes, he’s struggled with alcoholism, but he’s overcome it. His new 30-something girlfriend, Ines de Ramon, has been positioned as breezy and agreeable, unlike his ex he wants you to forget. On the red carpet for the London premiere of F1, he reconnected with his Interview With a Vampire co-star Tom Cruise. It was the first time they’ve been seen together publicly since 2001, a reunion calculated to burnish a sense of nostalgia. The cumulative effect of F1 and its press tour have been a carefully tuned charm offensive meant to obscure, if not outright bury, the alleged violent particulars of his behavior toward ex-wife Angelina Jolie. Pitt has been so successful at this rehabilitation that most of the public don’t even understand what he’s trying to rehabilitate himself for.
If you need a reminder: Court documents allege that, during a trip on their private plane in 2016, Pitt threw Jolie against a wall, shook her, and poured alcohol on her while she was trying to sleep. When their children tried to defend Jolie, Pitt “physically abused one of their children.” Five days after the flight, Jolie would file for divorce (it was only finalized in December 2024). In the years since, Pitt won an Oscar for Best Supporting actor in 2020 for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. His movies after that, Bullet Train (2022) and Wolfs (2024), didn’t light the world on fire. His Bullet Train press tour was marked by an awkward interaction with Bad Bunny, in which the Puerto Rican star looked unimpressed by Pitt’s attempts to embody the chill pinnacle of Hollywood stardom. Wolfs reteamed Pitt with his Oceans franchise co-star George Clooney, another evocation of past glory, but the film was a critical and financial flop. No one on either press tour asked Pitt a single question about Jolie.
Pitt as Sonny Hayes in F1 The Movie. Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Pitt’s team is smart enough to understand how much the market of stardom has shifted. It isn’t a coincidence that, while promoting F1: The Movie, Pitt has limited his press to outlets like Shepard’s podcast, which isn’t an interview but a conversation where the star won’t be pushed to address more prickly personal or professional matters. Six days ago, he jokingly read thirst tweets with his co-star Javier Bardem; a day before that, he got cheeky over Britishisms with his other co-star Damson Idris. In his latest glossy, GQ profile, Pitt gives an appearance of unmediated candor, even though he isn’t asked about Jolie or about his estrangement from his six children, some of whom are reportedly legally stripping his name from theirs.
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“I was pretty much on my knees, and I was really open. I was trying anything and everyone, anything anyone threw at me,” Pitt told Shepard about his alcoholism and decision to join Alcoholics Anonymous. “It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the fuck up in some areas.” What areas, exactly? Shepard doesn’t ask. Pitt has evoked sobriety in interview after interview, since the 2017 GQ cover-story profile in which he admitted, “I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional. I was good.” When asked why he dropped his addiction, he responded, “[You] don’t want to live that way anymore.” It’s a subtle way of making the argument that the reasons behind his issues with Jolie have been addressed. That he’s a changed man. He’s healed. The vague, illusory appearance of penance is enough, even if he doesn’t admit to what he’s committing to penance for. A sober friend told me the first thing you learn in AA is about letting go of your ego, the obsession with yourself that keeps your addiction alive. But when discussing his experiences, Pitt turns inward. It isn’t a way to step outside himself and help others by expressing the particulars of how he became healthier; it’s affirming his reinvented image.
Yet, his press tour appears to have worked. F1: The Movie is a propulsive, bombastic throwback to when an original blockbuster could be built on the strength of its star. When it premiered over the weekend, it became the most successful box-office opening of Pitt’s entire career.
Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a former F1 would-be powerhouse from the 1990s whose star fell after a devastating accident. He lives out of a camper somewhat off the grid, has been divorced several times over, and has gone bankrupt at least once after inheriting the gambling itch from his father. He carries himself with a gruff yet charming lone-cowboy demeanor. His old friend and team owner, Ruben Cervantes (Bardem), pulls him back in, in desperate hopes of an F1 win. The team includes braggadocio upstart Joshua Pearce (Idris), whom the film toys with giving the spotlight only to always cede ground to Sonny. It isn’t Joshua’s time yet, it is still the era of men like Sonny. This holds true in Hollywood too. For every joke the film makes about Sonny’s (and thusly, Pitt’s) age, there are at least three highlighting how hot he is. The film frames Sonny as the underdog but treats him like anything but. When Sonny starts winning, a Formula One announcer says with glee, “Someone call the 1990s. If you miss him, he’s back!” The announcer may be talking about the character Sonny Hayes, but the film is saying the same thing about its star. It wants to bring you back to the era when Pitt cemented his image of unruffled charm.
When an actor ties their rehabilitation to their blockbuster film, it becomes difficult to extricate the art from the artist. The onscreen performance feeds the off-screen persona. The off-screen persona is a performance, too, one that sells ideals and sometimes cashmere sweaters or cell-phone plans. Pitt has always sold a particular vision of American white masculinity, one predicated on charisma, unflappability, and seamless confidence. His deftness in removing the specter of violence from his own narrative is a reminder of the ways violence against women is normalized. It isn’t that people don’t believe in what happened to Jolie on that plane — they just don’t care.
Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly characterized Matthew Hiltzik’s relationship to Justin Baldoni and Donald Trump. His former protégés have represented them — Melissa Nathan represents Baldoni, and Hope Hicks and Josh Raffel worked for Trump.
