Brad Pitt is once again getting candid about how his split from Angelina Jolie has changed him.
Brad Pitt is once again getting candid about how his split from Angelina Jolie has changed him.
In a new interview with NPR, the 55-year-old actor talks about his film, Ad Astra, and is asked if his breakup from Jolie influenced his performance as an astronaut who goes into space in search of his lost father. Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, and the two engaged in a complicated custody battle over their six kids together -- 18-year-old Maddox, 15-year-old Pax, 14-year-old Zahara, 13-year-old Shiloh, and 11-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. In April, a judge ruled that their marriage was officially over.
"I would be exploring it whether there was a script that allowed that or not," Pitt says. "A breakup of a family is certainly an eye-opener that as one -- and I'm speaking in general again -- but as one needs to understand, you know, I had to understand my own culpability in that, and what can I do better? Because I don't want to go on like this."
As for what he says he drew from his character, he acknowledges having certain regrets in life.
"It seems universal that we all carry great pains, great feelings of loneliness and regrets," he says. "I had a friend who worked in a hospice and he said: 'The only thing that people talk about is their loves and then their regrets in love, dealing with love.' I thought: Man, that's really interesting. If that's our focus on the way out, better start working on that now."
Later, Pitt is asked about once defending his ex-fiancee, Gwyneth Paltrow, from movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Paltrow appeared on The Howard Stern Show last May, and said Pitt stood up to Weinstein after she claimed Weinstein made "a pass" at her in a hotel room when she was 22. Weinstein has denied any legal wrongdoing.
"Well, I can only speak to my experience. ... I mean, we're talking about an event in the late '90s, I think it was," Pitt says. "I mean, for me, I was just -- I'm a guy from the Ozarks, and that's the way we handle things. ... She was going to do a couple more films with him; just had to make sure it wasn't going to happen again."
"I just think we're more conscious, certainly of systems of place to speak out," he adds about how times have since changed. "You know, when those voices weren't heard, people who didn't protect them are also paying the price and rightfully so, and that's part of our recalibration."
ET recently spoke with Pitt at the Ad Astra premiere in Los Angeles, where he responded to the internet's thirst for him after his much-talked-about GQ magazine spread.
Watch the video below for more:
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