Brad Pitt Considers His Career “on [Its] Last Leg”

Brad Pitt’s career is by all accounts still thriving. Fresh off Bullet Train and The Lost City, he’s slated to star opposite Margot Robbie in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and a mystery movie with George Clooney. He’s established himself as a serious producer, playing a key role in developing upcoming films like Blonde and recent shows like The Underground Railroad. He’s even running a winery, recording studio, and expensive cashmere brand on the side. And yet, the 58-year-old Academy Award winner can’t stop thinking about his career coming to an end. “I consider myself on my last leg,” he said in GQ’s latest cover story. “This last semester or trimester. What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?”

This isn’t the first time Pitt has hinted that he’s slowly giving up life in the public eye. “I’m behind the camera on the producing side and I enjoy that a lot. But I keep doing less and less,” he said in another GQ interview in 2019. “I really believe that overall [Hollywood is] a younger man’s game—not that there aren’t substantial parts for older characters—I just feel, the game itself, it’ll move on naturally. There will be a natural selection to it all.” But his latest comments sound much more existential. Part of his strategy for figuring out what’s next is mulling over his dreams—and for a good four or five years, his most recurring one was about being stalked, jumped, and stabbed. (Pitt interprets it as about feeling unsafe and “completely alone,” a feeling he says he’s felt all his life.)

By processing his demise in his waking hours, Pitt has figured out the key to staying alive in real life. “I’m one of those creatures that speaks through art,” he said. “I just want to always make. If I’m not making, I’m dying in some way.” Beyond movies, his creative pursuits extend to sculpture, furniture, homes, wine, and, increasingly, music. “Music fills me with so much joy,” he added. “I think joy’s been a newer discovery, later in life. I was always moving with the currents, drifting in a way, and onto the next. I think I spent years with a low-grade depression, and it’s not until coming to terms with that, trying to embrace all sides of self—the beauty and the ugly—that I’ve been able to catch those moments of joy.” Hopefully, a bit of that joy will continue to come from appearing on screen.