BY JAMES BEAL AND CAROLINE IGGULDEN 22nd February 2017
The actress insisted that Brad was still a 'wonderful' father
AMID the drama of their split, she was quick to define their roles.
He was a drug-smoking, child-beating drunk — under investigation by the FBI — and she was the humanitarian domestic goddess who fled the marriage “for the health of the family”.
But now, just five months later, Angelina Jolie is praising Brad Pitt as a “wonderful” father while she drags their six children to Cambodia and feeds them fried spiders as she promotes her latest worthy movie.
On the other hand, Brad got a spontaneous standing ovation from Hollywood’s elite at last month’s Golden Globes and his latest film as producer, Moonlight, has won critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations.
Last night insiders told The Sun that in the marriage fallout, Angelina may have won the kids but Brad has kept Hollywood.
One source said: “She’s so disliked in LA now it will be a miracle if she is able to salvage any friendships.
“Angelina has always been a guy’s girl. She has always been brutal when it came to Brad’s female co-stars — but that’s nothing compared to his buddies’ girlfriends.
“She was horrifically rude to George Clooney’s girls, particularly Stacy Keibler, and she totally snubbed Amal when she came to hear her speak in the UK.
“Brad hides this well but he’s an accomplished Hollywood networker. He’s taken a load of contacts and friends with him.
“She’ll have to turn to China for money for another big movie because Brad is such a prominent producer now, with key relationships with all the big financiers.
“Nobody will want to look like they’re disloyal to him by under- writing a movie she directs.”
She’s on Hollywood’s outside looking in
Writer Andrew Morton, who penned an unauthorised biography of Angelina in 2010, added: “She is a very polarising figure.
“This is exactly the same modus operandi as her 2003 divorce from Billy Bob Thornton. She accused him of having affairs on the road and being a bad father.
“Angelina has never really been in Hollywood. She has always been on the outside looking in. Her UN work has taken precedence and her film work has funded that.
“I’m not surprised Hollywood has backed Brad. They realise it takes two to tango.”
Angelina, 41 — nicknamed The Groom Raider by pals of Brad’s ex-wife Jennifer Aniston — filed for divorce from him in September, shortly after accusing him of a drunken incident on a private jet.
Brad, 53, was apparently blindsided, particularly as she had previously raved about him as a superb dad.
He hid away at home in LA as the FBI and social services investigated claims he had been “verbally abusive” and “physical” with 15-year-old son Maddox aboard the flight from France to the US.
Angelina filed for divorce just five days later and sought sole custody of their children.
Allegations of his pot smoking, drinking and temper tantrums followed fast after she hired attack-dog lawyer Laura Wasser.
She declared that Angelina’s decision to call quits on their 12-year relationship — and two-year marriage — was “for the health of the family” and Brad was allowed only limited, supervised visits with the children.
It seemed his reputation had been well and truly trashed.
Yet by November he was in the clear. Both the FBI and social services found there had been no evidence of wrongdoing.
Angelina has since put out feelers for a public relations expert to boost her image — but none of the major LA players wants to get involved.
Insiders agree that Brad’s status as a Hollywood favourite was simply too tough to shatter, with the heart-throb signing a £48million deal with Netflix for forthcoming film War Machine.
One said: “It’s been pretty obvious what the industry has thought of her for a while. In the 2014 email hacking, when conversations between a studio head and a super-producer were leaked, she was described as a ‘minimally talented spoiled brat’ with a ‘rampaging ego’.”
In May, Angelina will begin filming Maleficent 2 in London, and while normally she would not see money until after completion, production company Disney has reportedly given her an advance to keep her afloat.
The source added: “It’s very uncomfortable for her to have to borrow money like this but she has no choice. Her life is very expensive.”
Despite her help from Disney, Hollywood’s loyalties were made clear by Brad’s standing ovation at the Globes — as well as the Best Drama Motion Picture award for Moonlight.
And while he is picking out his outfit for Sunday’s Oscars, Angelina is in Cambodia, drumming up publicity for her film about the country’s Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s, First They Killed My Father.
A film source told us: “People at Plan B (Brad’s production company) have been enjoying the irony that she’s previously gone out of her way to avoid using her family to sell film tickets.
"But for this one she’s shown no such reluctance.”
Earlier this week, sitting barefoot and cross-legged in a forest clearing opposite BBC reporter Yalda Hakim, Angelina said her dream was to educate the Cambodian people on the horror.
It is not known how many of them have the Netflix subscription they would need to see it.
In another photocall she was pictured eating fried tarantulas with her kids in the jungle, like a scene from I’m A Celebrity.
She told one interviewer that Maddox, the couple’s Cambodian-born eldest son, who Angelina adopted at seven months, was the driving force behind the film, reading the script and helping with notes.
Angelina adopted at seven months, was the driving force behind the film, reading the script and helping with notes.
The children are used to eating scorpions
At 15, Maddox does not attend school and his cinematic experience so far is playing extras in films made by his parents.
Backers of Angelina’s latest film, having seen her last one By The Sea make just £427,000 at the box office in 2015 on a budget of £8million, are said to be keen that she pulls out all the stops for this one.
Luckily, a really headline-grabbing topic emerged in her BBC chat — her separation from Brad.
Lips quivering, she took a huge breath, waited a full 11 seconds and said: “I don’t want to say very much about that, except that it was a very difficult time. And we are a family. And we will always be a family.
“My focus is my children — our children. We are and for ever will be a family so that is how I’m coping, to make sure this somehow makes us stronger and closer.”
In a second interview, screened yesterday by American channel ABC, Angelina, dressed in black, again choked up and this time paused for nine seconds before insisting that Brad was still a “wonderful” father.
“Of course” he was a good role model for their children, she added.
The interview then lost its sombre tone when she was forced to defend feeding her kids on jungle critters.
The woman who just a few months ago had won custody of her children because their father was so appalling, joked uncomfortably: “They’re used to eating scorpions, especially Shiloh. Shiloh loves a tarantula, loves a bug.
“They can eat a bag of crickets like a bag of chips. They’re used to it.
"I’m learning to cook them better, a little more flair, a little more seasoning.”
How Brad must have laughed.
not mine.credit and source: THE SUN
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Angelina may have the kids, but Brad has custody of Hollywood
By Maureen Callahan February 19, 2017
Toward the end of last month’s Golden Globes ceremony, the producer of the nominated drama “Moonlight” made a surprise onstage appearance: Brad Pitt.
Before he could begin his remarks, the crowd burst into loud, sustained applause. More than a few of his peers gave him a standing ovation. He looked trim, tan, better than he had in years, and even he seemed taken aback by the level of support expressed that night.
No matter how the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie divorce shakes out, one thing’s clear: Pitt wins custody of Hollywood.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, at least according to Jolie’s post-split strategy. Hours after she blindsided Pitt with her divorce filing last September, rapid-fire leaks full of intimate, sordid details surfaced on TMZ: Jolie filed for divorce “for the health of the family.” She had the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigate Pitt — who she had publicly, profusely said was a wonderful father — on charges of child abuse. Jolie filed for sole custody of their six children while reports somehow surfaced that Pitt had a terrible temper and issues with drugs and alcohol. Then came word that Pitt would be allowed only limited, supervised visits with those children who even wanted to see him.
It was a remarkable data dump for a couple who had spent 12 years together on lockdown, preserving their ostensibly perfect Brangelina brand: the most glamorous, enviable couple in Hollywood since Liz and Dick.
Within days, Pitt went into hiding. Save for one pointed court filing in December, in which his team stated that Jolie was placing “her own interests above those of the minor children” and “apparently has no self-regulating mechanism to preclude sensitive information from being placed in the public record,” Pitt remained silent.
Clearly, Jolie must have believed she was winning public opinion. After all, she was the rare megastar without a publicist, and she had masterfully reinvented herself multiple times: She had gone from wanton, drug-using, incest-teasing, vial-of-blood-wearing starlet to valiant single mom to selfless humanitarian to devoted, domesticated wife. She wrote and directed movies, traveled to refugee camps, worked for the UN, was made an honorary dame by the Queen of England. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was in retreat.
What couldn’t Angelina Jolie do?
After Pitt’s triumphant appearance at the Globes, Jolie apparently realized there was, in fact, one thing even she couldn’t do: Make people in Hollywood hate Brad Pitt. The subtext was even worse: They tolerated her only because of him.
Less than 24 hours after Pitt’s re-emergence, she issued a joint statement with him that read, in part, that they were “committed to act as a united front” and that they were hiring a private judge to keep everything confidential. Most interestingly, Page Six reported last week that Jolie had begun reaching out to top Hollywood publicists for help in rehabbing her image.
So far, no one’s interested.
Jolie’s isolation from her peers and the show-business community at large has often been attributed to her controversial manager, Geyer Kosinski. His reputation in Hollywood is toxic: In 2010, Deadline reported that he was “known to be very controlling, very secretive, very involved with his clients’ lives.” He’s also known as “Geyer the Liar,” and in 2013 Jolie fired him after he bungled the deal that would have had her star in “Gravity,” the outer-space thriller that won seven Oscars and a Best Actress nomination for Sandra Bullock.
Yet just after Jolie filed for divorce, Kosinski was back in her inner circle, advising her and giving statements to the media on her behalf.
“Angelina will always do what’s in the best interest of taking care of her family,” Kosinski told E! News at the time.
It was a line that few were buying.
On Saturday, Jolie made her first public appearance since the divorce announcement, and it seems she and Kosinski have gone back to her old playbook: Trot out the kids, head to a Third World country, mingle with royalty and refugees, and promote her latest film while pretending to be above such crass commercialism.
While premiering “First They Killed My Father,” the film she directed about the Cambodia genocide, Jolie met with the nation’s king at his palace, all six children in tow for the photo op. Then she took them to a press conference where she sat on a dais with Cambodian refugees before screening the film in an ancient Angkor Wat temple. People magazine reported that while Jolie was holding court, locals picnicked on a nearby river while monkeys foraged around them for food.
She told the press that her eldest son, Maddox, whom she adopted from Cambodia when he was 7 months old, was the animating force behind the film.
“He was the one who just called it and said he was ready and that he wanted to work on it, which he did,” Jolie told The Guardian. “He read the script and helped with notes and was in the production meetings.”
Maddox, who does not attend school, has just two film credits — one as a zombie in Pitt’s “World War Z” and the other as a “trainee” on Jolie’s “By the Sea.” He is 15 years old.
Even before the split, it seems Jolie wasn’t well respected or liked in the industry. She had a reputation for stealing other actresses’ boyfriends: Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton in May 2000 while his girlfriend, Laura Dern, was out of town. “I left our home to go make a movie, and while I was away my boyfriend got married,” Dern later said. “I never heard from him again.”
And, of course, there was Pitt, who was married to Jennifer Aniston when Jolie came along. After news of the Brangelina divorce broke, it was reported that Aniston and her friends called Jolie “The Groom Raider.” Jolie herself admitted that despite her wealth and fame, she had no real friends.
“I’ll talk to my family,” she told Marie Claire in 2011. “I talk to Brad . . . But I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of friends I talk to. He really is the only person I talk to.”
One year later, Jolie and Pitt appeared at the Oscars, and she became an internet meme after posing ridiculously with her right leg jutting out of her billowing black Versace gown. “Angelina Jolie looked like a fool the way she posed,” Joan Rivers said at the time. “She took herself right out of that superstar category because you now realize she stands in front of a mirror to figure out [what she looks like].”
The 2014 Sony hack revealed that behind-the-scenes powerbrokers didn’t think much of Jolie either. Emails between super-producer Scott Rudin and then-studio head Amy Pascal showed lots of sniping about Jolie, who wanted to star in a remake of “Cleopatra.”
Jolie, Rudin wrote, was a “minimally talented spoiled brat” and “a camp event” less interested in high-end filmmaking than taking “a $180m ego bath.”
When Jolie said she was still “studying a few more films” to decide whether the great Ridley Scott was a suitable director, Rudin wrote: “Beyond belief. She’s studying films. Kill me please. Immediately.” He also wrote that he couldn’t deal with her “insanity and rampaging spoiled ego” and eventually walked away from the project.
Pascal, meanwhile, criticized Jolie’s directorial adaptation of “Unbroken” after it bombed at a preview screening. “[D]oesn’t sound like Academy [Awards] to me,” Pascal wrote — and this was the film Jolie had hoped would establish her as an A-list director. Instead, it opened to poor reviews and received no Oscar nominations.
At a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter later that year, Jolie sat among such respected directors as Christopher Nolan, Richard Linklater and Bennett Miller, and as she nattered on about her novice career and motherhood, director Mike Leigh widened his eyes and tugged on his hair in exasperation. After she gave a winding answer about life’s challenges, Leigh jumped in: “Apart from all that,” he asked Jolie, “are you a good director?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Judging by her most recent theatrical release, probably not. “By the Sea,” which she wrote, directed and co-starred in with Pitt, was a front-runner for the 2015 Razzies and made just $531,000 on a $10 million budget.
Pitt, meanwhile, just signed a $60 million deal with Netflix for his forthcoming film “War Machine.” His respected company, Plan B, produces both Oscar bait and crowd-pleasers — from “The Departed” to “The Big Short” to “12 Years a Slave” and this year’s critical favorite “Moonlight.”
Before their split, Jolie was set to direct Pitt in “Africa,” a would-be epic about the life of conservationist Richard Leakey.
That project is no longer happening. It seems Jolie has begun to realize that so much of her star power and goodwill was on loan from Pitt. Without it, her future in Hollywood is uncertain at best, and the damage she has done to her highly crafted image may be irreparable. As high-powered divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told The Post last week, “Hiring a p.r. person now is like going for a checkup after you’ve already had the heart attack.”
not mine.credit and source: PAGE SIX
Toward the end of last month’s Golden Globes ceremony, the producer of the nominated drama “Moonlight” made a surprise onstage appearance: Brad Pitt.
Before he could begin his remarks, the crowd burst into loud, sustained applause. More than a few of his peers gave him a standing ovation. He looked trim, tan, better than he had in years, and even he seemed taken aback by the level of support expressed that night.
No matter how the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie divorce shakes out, one thing’s clear: Pitt wins custody of Hollywood.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, at least according to Jolie’s post-split strategy. Hours after she blindsided Pitt with her divorce filing last September, rapid-fire leaks full of intimate, sordid details surfaced on TMZ: Jolie filed for divorce “for the health of the family.” She had the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigate Pitt — who she had publicly, profusely said was a wonderful father — on charges of child abuse. Jolie filed for sole custody of their six children while reports somehow surfaced that Pitt had a terrible temper and issues with drugs and alcohol. Then came word that Pitt would be allowed only limited, supervised visits with those children who even wanted to see him.
It was a remarkable data dump for a couple who had spent 12 years together on lockdown, preserving their ostensibly perfect Brangelina brand: the most glamorous, enviable couple in Hollywood since Liz and Dick.
Within days, Pitt went into hiding. Save for one pointed court filing in December, in which his team stated that Jolie was placing “her own interests above those of the minor children” and “apparently has no self-regulating mechanism to preclude sensitive information from being placed in the public record,” Pitt remained silent.
Clearly, Jolie must have believed she was winning public opinion. After all, she was the rare megastar without a publicist, and she had masterfully reinvented herself multiple times: She had gone from wanton, drug-using, incest-teasing, vial-of-blood-wearing starlet to valiant single mom to selfless humanitarian to devoted, domesticated wife. She wrote and directed movies, traveled to refugee camps, worked for the UN, was made an honorary dame by the Queen of England. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was in retreat.
What couldn’t Angelina Jolie do?
After Pitt’s triumphant appearance at the Globes, Jolie apparently realized there was, in fact, one thing even she couldn’t do: Make people in Hollywood hate Brad Pitt. The subtext was even worse: They tolerated her only because of him.
Less than 24 hours after Pitt’s re-emergence, she issued a joint statement with him that read, in part, that they were “committed to act as a united front” and that they were hiring a private judge to keep everything confidential. Most interestingly, Page Six reported last week that Jolie had begun reaching out to top Hollywood publicists for help in rehabbing her image.
So far, no one’s interested.
Jolie’s isolation from her peers and the show-business community at large has often been attributed to her controversial manager, Geyer Kosinski. His reputation in Hollywood is toxic: In 2010, Deadline reported that he was “known to be very controlling, very secretive, very involved with his clients’ lives.” He’s also known as “Geyer the Liar,” and in 2013 Jolie fired him after he bungled the deal that would have had her star in “Gravity,” the outer-space thriller that won seven Oscars and a Best Actress nomination for Sandra Bullock.
Yet just after Jolie filed for divorce, Kosinski was back in her inner circle, advising her and giving statements to the media on her behalf.
“Angelina will always do what’s in the best interest of taking care of her family,” Kosinski told E! News at the time.
It was a line that few were buying.
On Saturday, Jolie made her first public appearance since the divorce announcement, and it seems she and Kosinski have gone back to her old playbook: Trot out the kids, head to a Third World country, mingle with royalty and refugees, and promote her latest film while pretending to be above such crass commercialism.
While premiering “First They Killed My Father,” the film she directed about the Cambodia genocide, Jolie met with the nation’s king at his palace, all six children in tow for the photo op. Then she took them to a press conference where she sat on a dais with Cambodian refugees before screening the film in an ancient Angkor Wat temple. People magazine reported that while Jolie was holding court, locals picnicked on a nearby river while monkeys foraged around them for food.
She told the press that her eldest son, Maddox, whom she adopted from Cambodia when he was 7 months old, was the animating force behind the film.
“He was the one who just called it and said he was ready and that he wanted to work on it, which he did,” Jolie told The Guardian. “He read the script and helped with notes and was in the production meetings.”
Maddox, who does not attend school, has just two film credits — one as a zombie in Pitt’s “World War Z” and the other as a “trainee” on Jolie’s “By the Sea.” He is 15 years old.
Even before the split, it seems Jolie wasn’t well respected or liked in the industry. She had a reputation for stealing other actresses’ boyfriends: Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton in May 2000 while his girlfriend, Laura Dern, was out of town. “I left our home to go make a movie, and while I was away my boyfriend got married,” Dern later said. “I never heard from him again.”
And, of course, there was Pitt, who was married to Jennifer Aniston when Jolie came along. After news of the Brangelina divorce broke, it was reported that Aniston and her friends called Jolie “The Groom Raider.” Jolie herself admitted that despite her wealth and fame, she had no real friends.
“I’ll talk to my family,” she told Marie Claire in 2011. “I talk to Brad . . . But I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of friends I talk to. He really is the only person I talk to.”
One year later, Jolie and Pitt appeared at the Oscars, and she became an internet meme after posing ridiculously with her right leg jutting out of her billowing black Versace gown. “Angelina Jolie looked like a fool the way she posed,” Joan Rivers said at the time. “She took herself right out of that superstar category because you now realize she stands in front of a mirror to figure out [what she looks like].”
The 2014 Sony hack revealed that behind-the-scenes powerbrokers didn’t think much of Jolie either. Emails between super-producer Scott Rudin and then-studio head Amy Pascal showed lots of sniping about Jolie, who wanted to star in a remake of “Cleopatra.”
Jolie, Rudin wrote, was a “minimally talented spoiled brat” and “a camp event” less interested in high-end filmmaking than taking “a $180m ego bath.”
When Jolie said she was still “studying a few more films” to decide whether the great Ridley Scott was a suitable director, Rudin wrote: “Beyond belief. She’s studying films. Kill me please. Immediately.” He also wrote that he couldn’t deal with her “insanity and rampaging spoiled ego” and eventually walked away from the project.
Pascal, meanwhile, criticized Jolie’s directorial adaptation of “Unbroken” after it bombed at a preview screening. “[D]oesn’t sound like Academy [Awards] to me,” Pascal wrote — and this was the film Jolie had hoped would establish her as an A-list director. Instead, it opened to poor reviews and received no Oscar nominations.
At a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter later that year, Jolie sat among such respected directors as Christopher Nolan, Richard Linklater and Bennett Miller, and as she nattered on about her novice career and motherhood, director Mike Leigh widened his eyes and tugged on his hair in exasperation. After she gave a winding answer about life’s challenges, Leigh jumped in: “Apart from all that,” he asked Jolie, “are you a good director?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Judging by her most recent theatrical release, probably not. “By the Sea,” which she wrote, directed and co-starred in with Pitt, was a front-runner for the 2015 Razzies and made just $531,000 on a $10 million budget.
Pitt, meanwhile, just signed a $60 million deal with Netflix for his forthcoming film “War Machine.” His respected company, Plan B, produces both Oscar bait and crowd-pleasers — from “The Departed” to “The Big Short” to “12 Years a Slave” and this year’s critical favorite “Moonlight.”
Before their split, Jolie was set to direct Pitt in “Africa,” a would-be epic about the life of conservationist Richard Leakey.
That project is no longer happening. It seems Jolie has begun to realize that so much of her star power and goodwill was on loan from Pitt. Without it, her future in Hollywood is uncertain at best, and the damage she has done to her highly crafted image may be irreparable. As high-powered divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told The Post last week, “Hiring a p.r. person now is like going for a checkup after you’ve already had the heart attack.”
not mine.credit and source: PAGE SIX
Thursday, November 24, 2016
How Brad Pitt Changed Hollywood Action Movies
By Mack Rawden
2 years ago
Back in the 1980s, Hollywood action movies preferred their male leads to have gigantic arms. They wanted Hulk Hogan lookalikes with Popeye biceps who could conceivably one punch any human being into a coma. More recently, however, the standard of badass bodies has changed quite a bit. Now, Hollywood action movies prefer their male leads to have more chiseled stomachs and well-defined features. Why the change? Well, apparently Brad Pitt had a whole lot to do with it.
It sounds counterintuitive, but instead of gaining weight to play the muscular Fight Club star Tyler Durden, he actually shed pounds. Audiences couldn’t tell that on the big screen. Instead, they simply saw a dude who was as cut as possible, and that role completely changed the game for both actors and stars looking to land parts as physically intimidating alpha males.
And here’s what trainer to the stars Mark Twight told Men’s Journal about that lean, hungry body…
"Everyone thought he was huge, but he was, like, 155 pounds. If you strip away fat and get guys to 3, 4 percent body fat, they look huge without necessarily being huge."
Twight isn’t the only one who saw his body as a gamechanger either. Every single trainer interviewed for the magazine’s exhaustive story on the evolving masculine body in Hollywood openly spoke about Pitt’s influence and how they still strive to make their clients look like he did in Fight Club. Why? Because it’s actually way easier to do. Actors often spend about two months or so getting in shape for action films. That abbreviated time schedule doesn’t allow the necessary workouts for the actors to put on ten or fifteen pounds of straight muscle, no matter how hard they try. So, trainers instead push "calorie-conscious diets and exercises" that can drop body mass indexes and let the camera capture the muscle naturally embedded beneath the stomach.
The alteration has been a giant blessing for many actors who couldn't have otherwise done action movies, and it's been a bit of a blow to the big hulking dudes who normally would have cleaned up on all of those roles. That being said, it seems like in a perfect world, there will always be a place for both of those groups. Now, the landscape has just changed enough where no one can get the lead role in a blockbuster film based on his body alone.
For most actors, inspiring much of Hollywood to change its shape would be enough of a legacy, but Pitt didn’t stop there. Apparently, he added one little extra flourish to the whole process. Just seconds before filming for Snatch and many of his other films, Pitt would drop to the ground and start firing off push-ups. At the time, those on the set apparently thought he was showing off, but actually, he was increasing blood flow to his arms and various other muscles so as to look as jacked as possible for the final cut. Now, that pre-shot routine is standard operating procedure for action movies.
Let me just sum up this entire conversation by saying Brad Pitt is a total badass, and if you haven’t seen Fight Club before, you should drop what you’re doing and go knock that out right now.
not mine.credit and source: CINEMABLEND
2 years ago
Back in the 1980s, Hollywood action movies preferred their male leads to have gigantic arms. They wanted Hulk Hogan lookalikes with Popeye biceps who could conceivably one punch any human being into a coma. More recently, however, the standard of badass bodies has changed quite a bit. Now, Hollywood action movies prefer their male leads to have more chiseled stomachs and well-defined features. Why the change? Well, apparently Brad Pitt had a whole lot to do with it.
It sounds counterintuitive, but instead of gaining weight to play the muscular Fight Club star Tyler Durden, he actually shed pounds. Audiences couldn’t tell that on the big screen. Instead, they simply saw a dude who was as cut as possible, and that role completely changed the game for both actors and stars looking to land parts as physically intimidating alpha males.
And here’s what trainer to the stars Mark Twight told Men’s Journal about that lean, hungry body…
"Everyone thought he was huge, but he was, like, 155 pounds. If you strip away fat and get guys to 3, 4 percent body fat, they look huge without necessarily being huge."
Twight isn’t the only one who saw his body as a gamechanger either. Every single trainer interviewed for the magazine’s exhaustive story on the evolving masculine body in Hollywood openly spoke about Pitt’s influence and how they still strive to make their clients look like he did in Fight Club. Why? Because it’s actually way easier to do. Actors often spend about two months or so getting in shape for action films. That abbreviated time schedule doesn’t allow the necessary workouts for the actors to put on ten or fifteen pounds of straight muscle, no matter how hard they try. So, trainers instead push "calorie-conscious diets and exercises" that can drop body mass indexes and let the camera capture the muscle naturally embedded beneath the stomach.
The alteration has been a giant blessing for many actors who couldn't have otherwise done action movies, and it's been a bit of a blow to the big hulking dudes who normally would have cleaned up on all of those roles. That being said, it seems like in a perfect world, there will always be a place for both of those groups. Now, the landscape has just changed enough where no one can get the lead role in a blockbuster film based on his body alone.
For most actors, inspiring much of Hollywood to change its shape would be enough of a legacy, but Pitt didn’t stop there. Apparently, he added one little extra flourish to the whole process. Just seconds before filming for Snatch and many of his other films, Pitt would drop to the ground and start firing off push-ups. At the time, those on the set apparently thought he was showing off, but actually, he was increasing blood flow to his arms and various other muscles so as to look as jacked as possible for the final cut. Now, that pre-shot routine is standard operating procedure for action movies.
Let me just sum up this entire conversation by saying Brad Pitt is a total badass, and if you haven’t seen Fight Club before, you should drop what you’re doing and go knock that out right now.
not mine.credit and source: CINEMABLEND
Thursday, August 18, 2016
It's a never ending battle with tabloids and paparazzi. that's the price you have to pay for being in the spotlight, being in hollywood, for being famous. You'll be on the news everytime even if it's for non- sense, made-up news, big fat lie headlines just to sell their tabloids and magazines.
So might as well enjoy it and learn to balance your public and private life. Choose your battles in life. and when you reach the point when you're getting fed up just remember you are stronger than the shit's and lies tabloids made of you. You know your truth. Just don't lose yourself in the process and in the sea of paparazzi and fame. And sometimes it's better if you're just mum about it and don't say anything about the tabloids. don't waste your energy on those shit lies on tabloids.
So might as well enjoy it and learn to balance your public and private life. Choose your battles in life. and when you reach the point when you're getting fed up just remember you are stronger than the shit's and lies tabloids made of you. You know your truth. Just don't lose yourself in the process and in the sea of paparazzi and fame. And sometimes it's better if you're just mum about it and don't say anything about the tabloids. don't waste your energy on those shit lies on tabloids.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Brad Pitt: Hollywood's most wanted man
Updated 9/18/2007 1:53 PM
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
TORONTO — There's a reason Brad Pitt is as elusive as his latest character, slippery, sinister gunslinger Jesse James. He is today's outlaw celebrity, living a nomadic existence with his family. There's a sizable price on his head, as any paparazzo will attest. His face sells magazines, his presence inspires hysteria among fans, who abandon rational behavior for a glimpse, a touch, a photo. Like James and his gang, he travels with a posse of kids, security and a life partner.
So it's hardly shocking that Pitt, 43, relates to the desperado he embodies in the intense character study The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The nearly three-hour film, opening in limited release Friday, just netted Pitt the best-actor award at the Venice Film Festival, though the film itself is getting mixed reviews. Pitt's Jesse James is a mercurial, mercenary killer with a mean streak, murdered by a member of his gang.
"I understand the essence of paranoia," Pitt says. "I understand being hunted, to some degree. I understand a bounty on my head. But the movie is about so much more. The real tragedy is that there was a chance he could have gotten past this moment. He's wrestling with himself and lost that battle."
If Pitt wrestles with anything these days, it's the media and fan frenzy that encroaches on his life but is necessary to sell his films and promote his causes.
For this interview at the Toronto Film Festival, Pitt at the last minute insists that director Andrew Dominik join him to keep questions squarely focused on the film. One thing is clear: He's not interested in sharing touchy-feely details of life with partner Angelina Jolie, 32, and their kids Maddox, 6, Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 1.
He's dressed casually in a tan shirt and gray newsboy cap as he lopes into the room accompanied by a small entourage of publicists and stylists. Knowing the effect his name and presence have, he makes an effort to bridge gaps and connect by extending his hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Brad." But he never once makes eye contact.
At first, he tries to shift the attention away from himself entirely, pointing to a newspaper with fellow festival attendee Terrence Howard on the cover and saying, "That boy's good."
He praises his Babel wife Cate Blanchett, exclaiming happily when he learns she's at the festival for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, calling her "exquisite" and "gorgeous," and adding, "you can't take a bad picture of her."
He eventually does share a personal detail. He misses his children, who are back in New York: "Two days without the kids," he mutters, shaking his head. But he's not here to discuss his home life: "Personal anecdotes — what does that have to do with the movie?" he asks.
Perhaps the actor is still shaken up by the previous night's premiere of Jesse James, which metastasized into a mob scene. "We had to come back here. We had to get under a garage," he tells Dominik. "Nothing was cordoned off. There were no barriers."
Toronto gossip columnist Lainey Lui (laineygossip.com), who has covered the festival for years, calls what unfolded "the biggest celebrity mob scene ever. Ever."
Jolie and Pitt were in a car together, en route from their screening to the private after-party. "The crowd was so thick anyway, from people downtown on a Saturday night. And then, they were spotted," Lui says. "The crowd started to find out that it was Brad and Angelina. People who were driving down on other streets left their cars and ran to see them. Seven people jumped on their car."
Pitt and Jolie's vehicle tried to inch forward. "We saw all these people running. People were holding up their cellphones (to take photos). This woman appears out of nowhere, runs up with her child, and was pushing her child up against the (moving) car. The lady was like: 'I want my baby to see Brad Pitt.' "
Through it all, "Brad was yelling at the driver to drive, Angelina looked like a woman completely paralyzed. You could read her lips, and she kept saying, 'Get back to the hotel.' "
None of his buddies — Matt Damon or George Clooney, say — have to deal with anything near the furor surrounding Pitt's life.
The next day, Pitt insists that he and Jolie control and manage the fame and rarely find it overpowering. "I understand the deal. It got chaotic last night, but there was genuine happiness, and it meant something to them. It only bothers me when they get in the kids' faces."
Yet they have no plans to stop adding to their family. He has talked openly before about wanting a fifth child. Now he adds, "We're certainly not done. Sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth …"
The family's current base is New York because he is shooting the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading. Jolie and Pitt globe-trot from movie set to movie set, stopping in at their homes in Los Angeles, England and New Orleans in between. It's no accident their life starkly resembles the wandering existence of the James clan, which quietly shuffled from home to home to evade authorities.
"It's impossible for us," he says. "We're run out of every major city. There's just too many paparazzi. There's always cameras in the kids' faces, yelling their names. Angie gets out of the car, and they take the camera down to the curb and shoot up (her skirt). It's unbelievable." That's why "there's a constant negotiation in how to survive and how to maintain a family life."
There's also the maintenance of their charitable causes.
Jolie famously advocates for refugees worldwide, while he is active in the ONE campaign to eradicate poverty and Global Green, which is replacing homes in New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina with eco-friendly buildings.
"It's dismal down there," he says of the city. "We're expanding to a larger project that we're not ready to announce yet."
Bono, who sets the standard in celebrity activism and knows Pitt through their work on the ONE campaign, praises Pitt's efforts and his "intellectual curiosity."
"He has another thing hardly anyone else has in his position: modesty. He never wants to be the professor and always wants to be the student. His modesty belies his capability. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to know the subjects. He's not turning up for the photos, he gets into the trenches. There's a striking candor about him."
Surely, Pitt isn't perfect. Bono responds: "Would you give your house to him for the weekend? Absolutely, but you'd better check your scotch."
Dominik can't quite believe his collaborator of four years is the celebrity world's most wanted man. His first film, Chopper, starred a then-unknown Eric Bana. And Dominik is seeing firsthand the global sensation that is Brad Pitt.
"I just realized how famous he was over the last two places (Venice and Toronto). It's kind of thrilling, a sugar rush, but also really threatening. In Venice, after the press conference, a wave of 200 people ran at the table."
Pitt likens it to "a starting gun going off."
Moviegoers won't find that kind of rush in the pair's film. The movie, which Dominik admits is long and has no surging plot, moves at a saunter and lacks the furious gunplay of a standard Western. Both Dominik and Pitt acknowledge it could be a tough sell for mainstream audiences accustomed to big, brash action flicks.
But Pitt clearly believes in his director: "Andrew understands the undercurrents that propel us to behave like we do, that don't make sense. And through the whole process, he never wavered on his vision."
Dominik says after a few days of shooting, he forgot Pitt was the star of his movie. "I completely accepted him as Jesse. Even in the cast, they would talk about Jesse, not Brad Pitt," he says.
"The hardest thing about doing something with Brad is that he's Brad. When you watch Brad on screen, you never really feel like you know him. He's got an old-time mystery."
James could sniff out liars and traitors. Pitt, too, says he has honed instincts he didn't know he had.
"You develop radar. Like I know when there's someone in the bushes 300 yards away shooting," he says. "I know to recognize that feeling. (On the Canadian set), there was a guy in total camouflage, who commandoed his way on knee and elbow. And I know that feeling. It's inexplicable, one of those instincts."
Confirms Dominik: "He would always spot the paparazzi hiding in the tree."
not mine.credit and source: USA TODAY
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
TORONTO — There's a reason Brad Pitt is as elusive as his latest character, slippery, sinister gunslinger Jesse James. He is today's outlaw celebrity, living a nomadic existence with his family. There's a sizable price on his head, as any paparazzo will attest. His face sells magazines, his presence inspires hysteria among fans, who abandon rational behavior for a glimpse, a touch, a photo. Like James and his gang, he travels with a posse of kids, security and a life partner.
So it's hardly shocking that Pitt, 43, relates to the desperado he embodies in the intense character study The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The nearly three-hour film, opening in limited release Friday, just netted Pitt the best-actor award at the Venice Film Festival, though the film itself is getting mixed reviews. Pitt's Jesse James is a mercurial, mercenary killer with a mean streak, murdered by a member of his gang.
"I understand the essence of paranoia," Pitt says. "I understand being hunted, to some degree. I understand a bounty on my head. But the movie is about so much more. The real tragedy is that there was a chance he could have gotten past this moment. He's wrestling with himself and lost that battle."
If Pitt wrestles with anything these days, it's the media and fan frenzy that encroaches on his life but is necessary to sell his films and promote his causes.
For this interview at the Toronto Film Festival, Pitt at the last minute insists that director Andrew Dominik join him to keep questions squarely focused on the film. One thing is clear: He's not interested in sharing touchy-feely details of life with partner Angelina Jolie, 32, and their kids Maddox, 6, Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 1.
He's dressed casually in a tan shirt and gray newsboy cap as he lopes into the room accompanied by a small entourage of publicists and stylists. Knowing the effect his name and presence have, he makes an effort to bridge gaps and connect by extending his hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Brad." But he never once makes eye contact.
At first, he tries to shift the attention away from himself entirely, pointing to a newspaper with fellow festival attendee Terrence Howard on the cover and saying, "That boy's good."
He praises his Babel wife Cate Blanchett, exclaiming happily when he learns she's at the festival for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, calling her "exquisite" and "gorgeous," and adding, "you can't take a bad picture of her."
He eventually does share a personal detail. He misses his children, who are back in New York: "Two days without the kids," he mutters, shaking his head. But he's not here to discuss his home life: "Personal anecdotes — what does that have to do with the movie?" he asks.
Perhaps the actor is still shaken up by the previous night's premiere of Jesse James, which metastasized into a mob scene. "We had to come back here. We had to get under a garage," he tells Dominik. "Nothing was cordoned off. There were no barriers."
Toronto gossip columnist Lainey Lui (laineygossip.com), who has covered the festival for years, calls what unfolded "the biggest celebrity mob scene ever. Ever."
Jolie and Pitt were in a car together, en route from their screening to the private after-party. "The crowd was so thick anyway, from people downtown on a Saturday night. And then, they were spotted," Lui says. "The crowd started to find out that it was Brad and Angelina. People who were driving down on other streets left their cars and ran to see them. Seven people jumped on their car."
Pitt and Jolie's vehicle tried to inch forward. "We saw all these people running. People were holding up their cellphones (to take photos). This woman appears out of nowhere, runs up with her child, and was pushing her child up against the (moving) car. The lady was like: 'I want my baby to see Brad Pitt.' "
Through it all, "Brad was yelling at the driver to drive, Angelina looked like a woman completely paralyzed. You could read her lips, and she kept saying, 'Get back to the hotel.' "
None of his buddies — Matt Damon or George Clooney, say — have to deal with anything near the furor surrounding Pitt's life.
The next day, Pitt insists that he and Jolie control and manage the fame and rarely find it overpowering. "I understand the deal. It got chaotic last night, but there was genuine happiness, and it meant something to them. It only bothers me when they get in the kids' faces."
Yet they have no plans to stop adding to their family. He has talked openly before about wanting a fifth child. Now he adds, "We're certainly not done. Sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth …"
The family's current base is New York because he is shooting the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading. Jolie and Pitt globe-trot from movie set to movie set, stopping in at their homes in Los Angeles, England and New Orleans in between. It's no accident their life starkly resembles the wandering existence of the James clan, which quietly shuffled from home to home to evade authorities.
"It's impossible for us," he says. "We're run out of every major city. There's just too many paparazzi. There's always cameras in the kids' faces, yelling their names. Angie gets out of the car, and they take the camera down to the curb and shoot up (her skirt). It's unbelievable." That's why "there's a constant negotiation in how to survive and how to maintain a family life."
There's also the maintenance of their charitable causes.
Jolie famously advocates for refugees worldwide, while he is active in the ONE campaign to eradicate poverty and Global Green, which is replacing homes in New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina with eco-friendly buildings.
"It's dismal down there," he says of the city. "We're expanding to a larger project that we're not ready to announce yet."
Bono, who sets the standard in celebrity activism and knows Pitt through their work on the ONE campaign, praises Pitt's efforts and his "intellectual curiosity."
"He has another thing hardly anyone else has in his position: modesty. He never wants to be the professor and always wants to be the student. His modesty belies his capability. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to know the subjects. He's not turning up for the photos, he gets into the trenches. There's a striking candor about him."
Surely, Pitt isn't perfect. Bono responds: "Would you give your house to him for the weekend? Absolutely, but you'd better check your scotch."
Dominik can't quite believe his collaborator of four years is the celebrity world's most wanted man. His first film, Chopper, starred a then-unknown Eric Bana. And Dominik is seeing firsthand the global sensation that is Brad Pitt.
"I just realized how famous he was over the last two places (Venice and Toronto). It's kind of thrilling, a sugar rush, but also really threatening. In Venice, after the press conference, a wave of 200 people ran at the table."
Pitt likens it to "a starting gun going off."
Moviegoers won't find that kind of rush in the pair's film. The movie, which Dominik admits is long and has no surging plot, moves at a saunter and lacks the furious gunplay of a standard Western. Both Dominik and Pitt acknowledge it could be a tough sell for mainstream audiences accustomed to big, brash action flicks.
But Pitt clearly believes in his director: "Andrew understands the undercurrents that propel us to behave like we do, that don't make sense. And through the whole process, he never wavered on his vision."
Dominik says after a few days of shooting, he forgot Pitt was the star of his movie. "I completely accepted him as Jesse. Even in the cast, they would talk about Jesse, not Brad Pitt," he says.
"The hardest thing about doing something with Brad is that he's Brad. When you watch Brad on screen, you never really feel like you know him. He's got an old-time mystery."
James could sniff out liars and traitors. Pitt, too, says he has honed instincts he didn't know he had.
"You develop radar. Like I know when there's someone in the bushes 300 yards away shooting," he says. "I know to recognize that feeling. (On the Canadian set), there was a guy in total camouflage, who commandoed his way on knee and elbow. And I know that feeling. It's inexplicable, one of those instincts."
Confirms Dominik: "He would always spot the paparazzi hiding in the tree."
not mine.credit and source: USA TODAY
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