Brad Pitt, who dropped out of college a week before he was due to graduate (probably not with honors) to drive to LA and take a shot at acting, once had a job as a chauffer for strippers. He said if it wasn’t for that depressing job, he would not have met a stripper who got him to go to an acting class that inspired him to pursue it as a career.
He made the confession to a Newsweek journalist during a roundtable discussion that included other potential Oscar nominees Helen Mirren, Forest Witaker, Cate Blanchett, Penelope Cruz, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Q: It seems every actor, no matter how successful, thinks he’ll never work again. Do you feel that way, Brad
BRAD PITT: Not really, no. [Laughter]Q: You all had some surprising early jobs before you became actors. Forest was a classical tenor. Helen was a sort of carnival barker.
PITT: I had a job driving strippers around.LEONARDO DICAPRIO: Really
BLANCHETT: Just last month.
PITT: I love her. Yeah, my job was to drive them to bachelor parties and things. I’d pick them up, and at the gig I’d collect the money, play the bad Prince tapes and catch the girls’ clothes. It was not a wholesome atmosphere, and it got very depressing. After two months I went in to quit, and the guy said, “Listen, I’ve got this one last gig tonight.” So I did it, and this girl”I’d never met her before”was in an acting class taught by a man named Roy London [a famous acting coach]. I went and checked it out, and it really set me on the path to where I am now.
Q: A stripper changed the course of your career.
PITT: [Nods] Strippers changed my life.Q; We’ll see that in the National Enquirer next week.
PITT: [Looks toward the ceiling] I just want one week off. Just one.
If Pitt wants a week off he should stop telling such great stories about his past. You know he was banging that stripper and he took the acting class to impress her, just like he learned to fly after he hooked up with Angie. Maybe if that stripper was into horseback riding instead he’d be living on a farm now.
Newsweek interview pictures from SimplyBrad.
[Date: 22-Jan-07 ]
