'The next move, what you do after the mistake, is what really defines a person.'
Brad Pitt is opening up about his past mistakes.
In a conversation with Anthony Hopkins for Interview Magazine, the 55-year-old actor reveals how he's learned to let go of "all the choices that I’ve made that I’m not proud of" as a "real act of forgiveness for myself."
"I value those missteps, because they led to some wisdom, which led to something else," he explains. "You can’t have one without the other. I see it as something I’m just now getting my arms around at this time in my life. But I certainly don’t feel like I can take credit for any of it."
Pitt also delves further into, as Hopkins puts it, his "struggle with booze and all of that."
"I just saw it as a disservice to myself, as an escape," Pitt says, adding that he viewed alcohol as necessary "to some degree."
The topics of blame, forgiveness, and acceptance are important to Pitt, because, he explains, "We’re living in a time where we’re extremely judgmental and quick to treat people as disposable."
"We’ve always placed great importance on the mistake. But the next move, what you do after the mistake, is what really defines a person," he says. "We’re all going to make mistakes. But what is that next step? We don’t, as a culture, seem to stick around to see what that person’s next step is. And that’s the part I find so much more invigorating and interesting."
In an effort to focus on that next step, Pitt strives to have his "gliding speed" be easy going, though, he admits, "I lose it at times."
"I get sucked into something, and I can lose it. I take my hands off the wheel," he says. "... I'm human... We're human, we want purpose, we want meaning in our lives, but, to attain that, the key is two things: staying creative and being with the people we love."
Those people he loves include the six children -- Maddox, 18, Pax, 16, Zahara, 14, Shiloh, 13, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 11 -- with his ex, Angelina Jolie. But, it's only as of late, Pitt says, that that love and his life in general have led him to experience his emotions in a new way.
"I am quite famously a not-crier. Is that a term? I hadn’t cried in, like, 20 years," he reveals. "And now I find myself, at this latter stage, much more moved -- moved by my kids, moved by friends, moved by the news. Just moved. I think it’s a good sign. I don’t know where it’s going, but I think it’s a good sign."
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