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Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt’s career has often worked through contrast: movie-star ease set against characters who are damaged, dangerous, ridiculous or quietly adrift. Born William Bradley Pitt on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, he moved to Los Angeles shortly before completing a journalism degree at the University of Missouri. Acting lessons, odd jobs and small television and film appearances followed before Thelma & Louise brought him wider recognition as the charming small-time criminal J.D. The early 1990s quickly showed that Pitt was interested in testing that first impression. He moved from Paul Maclean in A River Runs Through It to the menace of Kalifornia, then played a detective facing an appalling case in Seven and the frenzied Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys. The latter earned him a Golden Globe and his first Academy Award nomination. Fight Club gave him one of his most closely associated roles as Tyler Durden, while Snatch revealed how effectively he could turn physical confidence and a difficult-to-decipher accent into comedy. Pitt became a dependable ensemble player as Rusty Ryan in the Ocean’s films, but his leading work continued to shift in tone and scale. He played Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the reverse-ageing title character of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in Moneyball and astronaut Roy McBride in Ad Astra. Burn After Reading and Inglourious Basterds made room for his broader comic instincts, while Fury and World War Z placed him at the centre of large-scale action. His career also extends behind the camera through producing and executive-producing work. Plan B Entertainment productions have included The Departed, 12 Years a Slave and The Big Short. As an actor, Pitt won an Academy Award for playing veteran stunt double Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a relaxed, funny and dangerous performance that neatly gathers several sides of his screen persona. Later starring roles have included Bullet Train, Babylon, Wolfs and F1.