Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt (born 18 December 1963) is an American actor and film producer whose career has taken him from his upbringing in the American Midwest to film productions across the world. Born William Bradley Pitt in Shawnee, Oklahoma, he is the son of William Alvin Pitt, who ran a trucking company, and Jane Etta Hillhouse, a school counsellor. His family has deep roots in Oklahoma, dating back to the Land Run of 1889, when relatives on his grandmother’s side settled around Noble and Purcell. The family later moved through Tulsa before settling in Springfield, Missouri, where Pitt spent most of his childhood.

Pitt attended Kickapoo High School in Springfield before enrolling at the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1982, studying journalism with a focus on advertising. In 1986, shortly before completing his degree, he left Missouri for Los Angeles to pursue acting. After several small film and television roles, he attracted wider attention as the young hitchhiker J.D. in Thelma & Louise (1991). His subsequent appearance in Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It (1992) brought him back to the landscapes of the American West. Set in Montana, the film was shot around Livingston, Bozeman and the surrounding countryside, with locations including Redeemer Lutheran Church in Livingston.

Interview with the Vampire (1994) took Pitt to Louisiana, where he played the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac opposite Tom Cruise. Filming took place in New Orleans and at historic plantations along the Mississippi River, including Destrehan Plantation and Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, which were used to portray Louis’s estate. Other sequences were filmed in London and at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, where the Théâtre des Vampires was constructed on the famous 007 Stage.

One of his most geographically ambitious productions was Seven Years in Tibet (1997), in which Pitt portrayed Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer. Although the story follows Harrer’s journey into Tibet and his relationship with the young Dalai Lama, much of the film was shot in Argentina. The Andes served as a substitute for the Himalayas, while the Tibetan capital of Lhasa was recreated in the Andean foothills. Additional filming took place in countries including Austria, Canada and Nepal, with a small amount of footage secretly obtained in Tibet itself.

Pitt subsequently appeared in Ocean’s Eleven (2001), which made extensive use of the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. For Troy (2004), he travelled to Malta to portray the Greek warrior Achilles. The ancient city of Troy was reconstructed around Fort Ricasoli in Kalkara, while coastal locations on Malta and near Cabo San Lucas in Mexico were used for the battle sequences. Inglourious Basterds (2009), despite being set largely in Nazi-occupied France, was filmed predominantly in Germany, with production based at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam and additional locations in Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony.

His Missouri upbringing also provides an interesting connection to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), in which Pitt portrayed the notorious American outlaw. Jesse James was closely associated with Missouri, but the film recreated the nineteenth-century American Midwest largely in Canada. Filming took place across Alberta, including Calgary and Edmonton, as well as in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the historic Exchange District provided several period locations.

Pitt returned to Los Angeles for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), portraying stuntman Cliff Booth in a recreation of Hollywood in 1969. The production used numerous actual locations around the city, including the historic Casa Vega restaurant in Sherman Oaks. The scenes at Spahn Ranch, formerly associated with Charles Manson and his followers, were filmed at Corriganville Park in Simi Valley, where the ranch was reconstructed near its original location. Pitt received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. His later film Bullet Train (2022), although set aboard a Japanese high-speed train, was filmed largely in California, including at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City.

For F1 (2025), Pitt’s work took him to a different kind of filming location. Playing veteran racing driver Sonny Hayes, he participated in a production filmed during actual Formula One Grand Prix weekends. The crew worked at racing circuits across several continents, including Silverstone in England, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, Monza in Italy, Suzuka in Japan and Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi. Pitt and co-star Damson Idris drove specially modified Formula 2 cars for the production, allowing the racing footage to be captured on real circuits rather than relying entirely on studio sets.

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