William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to trucking company owner William Alvin Pitt and school counselor Jane Etta (née Hillhouse). Soon after, the family relocated to Springfield, Missouri, where he lived with his younger siblings, Douglas Mitchell (born 1966) and Julie Neal (born 1969). He was raised as a Southern Baptist in a conservative Christian household and later “oscillated between agnosticism and atheism.” He later reconciled his spiritual belief. Pitt grew up in Springfield, which he describes as “Mark Twain country, Jesse James country,” with “a lot of hills, a lot of lakes.” Pitt went to Kickapoo High School and participated in the golf, swimming, and tennis teams. He was a member of the Key and Forensics clubs at school, as well as school debates and musicals. Pitt enrolled at the University of Missouri in 1982 after graduating from high school, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. Pitt was not ready to settle down as graduation approached. He loved movies, which he described as “a portal into different worlds for me,” and since they were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Pitt left the university two weeks before finishing his degree coursework and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting classes and worked odd jobs. He cites Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke as early acting influences. Pitt is distantly related to Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. The two share an 18th-century ancestor named Edwin Hickman.
Pitt took acting lessons from acting coach Roy London while struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles. His acting career began in 1987, with uncredited roles in the films No Way Out (1987), No Man’s Land (1987), and Less than Zero (1987). In May 1987, he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World. [20] Pitt made a guest appearance on both the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains in November of the same year. Between December 1987 and February 1988, he appeared as Randy, Charlie Wade’s boyfriend, in four episodes of the CBS primetime series Dallas. Later that year, Pitt appeared as a guest star on Fox’s police drama 21 Jump Street. The Dark Side of the Sun (1988), a Yugoslav-American co-production, was his first leading film role, with him playing a young American taken to the Adriatic by his family to find a cure for a skin condition. The film was put on hold when the Croatian War of Independence broke out, and it was not released until 1997. Pitt made two film appearances in 1989: the first was in the comedy Happy Together as a supporting actor, and the second was in the horror movie Cutting Class, Pitt’s first theatrical release. He made cameos on the TV shows Freddy’s Nightmares, Thirtysomething, Growing Pains, and (again) Head of the Class.
Who is Brad Pitt’s wife Jennifer Aniston?
Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were married from 2000 to 2005 and have remained close since their divorce. Despite going through one of Hollywood’s most public divorces, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are still “buddies” after 15 years.
