Editor’s Note: This column is part of Gold Trot, a series on the Academy Awards until the Feb. 9 telecast.
Standing before his peers at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, Brad Pitt never looked more comfortable.
Tieless with his hair slicked back, Pitt accepted the supporting actor award for his work in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” It was his second SAG Award in his 30-year career but his first as a solo actor. Both wins were for appearances in Quentin Tarantino movies, with the first for the cast of “Inglourious Basterds.”
“Let’s be honest; it was a difficult part. A guy who gets high, takes his shirt off and doesn’t get on with his wife. It was a big stretch,” Pitt said during his acceptance speech in a moment of self-depreciation. It’s not far off from how he has spent awards season — completely on cruise control and being loose.
When he was on the publicity trail last summer for the two big roles he scored — for “Once Upon a Time” and the astronaut drama “Ad Astra” — Pitt said to Entertainment Weekly in September he was not going to an Oscar campaign for either of them. It was a surprising stance to take when studios and agents require their stars to attend luncheons, parties and screenings with industry people to secure the big awards.
“I mean, you never know, and it’s really nice when your number comes up,” Pitt told EW. “But the goal is for the film to land, to speak to someone whether it’s now or a decade from now.”
Opportunities for himself as an actor have not been at the forefront for him for nearly 15 years. Instead, Pitt has been a producing force in the industry through his Plan B Entertainment company. Its simple black-and-white logo stamped on small and independent films is like a sign that you’re about to see a new storyteller or an aspect of life you haven’t seen yet.
For example, take Oscar winners “12 Years A Slave” and “Moonlight.” Both produced by Plan B, they were the first Best Picture winners to be helmed by black directors. Pitt won his only Academy Award for “12 Years A Slave” as a producer, and he backed the film because he was a fan of director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender. With that film’s success, Pitt helped generate interest in more diverse storytellers like Ava DuVarney’s “Selma” and Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” as an executive producer. He previously backed “Parasite” writer/director Bong Joon Ho’s “Okja,” and two 2018 film that received nominations, Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” and writer/director Adam McKay’s “Vice.”
Last year, Pitt produced “Ad Astra,” which is up for sound mixing, and Netflix’s “The King.” He also served as executive producer for the critically acclaimed Sundance hit (and a favorite of this columnist) “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” which is up for three Film Independent Spirit Awards. Plan B did collect major hardware this month with the Producers Guild of America gave Pitt and his partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner the David O. Selznick Achievement Award for their years of work. The company has the Marilyn Monroe biopic, “Blonde,” starring Ana de Armas of “Knives Out” and “No Time To Die,” and the immigration drama “Minari” with Steven Yuen to be released this year.
At 56, Pitt has called acting a “younger man’s game,” and in his SAG Award speech, he thanked the newer generation of actors he worked with in “Once Upon A Time” who helped raise the bar for him. In a New York Times interview last September, Pitt said he was starting to see his father in the roles he is playing now and that it was time for him to explore more artforms. “When you feel like you’ve finally got your arms around something, then it’s time to go get your arms around something else,” he said at the time.
Seeing Pitt make speeches brought back memories of when I watched him win a Golden Globe for his role in “12 Monkeys.” I was not immune to his charms in the 1990s. Like many teenage girls, I gave my parents a list of Pitt movies to rent at Blockbuster and I had a few posters on my bedroom walls. He started his Golden Globe acceptance speech with, “I would like to thank the makers of Kaopectate.” I was disappointed when my “fake heartthrob husband” didn’t win the Oscar a few weeks later.
However, if he wins on Feb. 9, I most likely will pretend that he won another Oscar for production because I am a mature movie columnist. But maturity will not stop me from hoping that Antonio Banderas also wins an Oscar that night so that there is an “Interview with a Vampire” reunion.
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