Brad Pitt to likely retire from acting in 2014.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 2:47pm

Brad Pitt said that he is most likely going to retire from acting in three years, "I am really enjoying the producing side and development of stories and putting those pieces together. And getting stories to the plate that might have had a tougher time otherwise … I have gotten away with a few things in writing and I have been pissed off about a few things. How’s that?” What’s he pissed about exactly? “Oh, dear God. I mean, come on. I’m gonna pass on that one."

We'll see if he really means it. I'm very confident this has been said by many actors and then they changed their minds.
Brad Pitt says he'll retire from acting in three years. (But we won't even be done watching 'Tree of Life' by then!)

[romantico]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 3:04pm

Sounds good I'm sure but it will never happen. He may take a long break but he'll come back to it. Angelina Jolie said something similar.

http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/2010/06/28/angelina-jolie-vanity-fair/

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 3:14pm

He's one of my favorite actors. I really hope this doesn't happen.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 3:17pm

Excellent news! His pathetic attempts at acting have only gotten more embarassing over the years. If only he'd made this decision before such horrors as INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, TROY and BENJAMIN BUTTON. And LEGENDS OF THE FALL. And INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. Man oh man.

But then, think of all the laughs at his expense I'd have missed.

Updated On: 11/14/11 at 03:17 PM

[SNAFU]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 3:34pm

Ah, once again I find myself in agreement with Roscoe!

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 4:35pm

His acting in Legends of the Fall might have been horrendous, but DAMN he was pretty.

[JbaraFan1]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 5:09pm

I tend to take these actor-to-retire stories (even if from the actor himself) with a grain of salt. I believe they believe it when they say it though. lol

Thread reminded me of how Pitt got his start, like so many others, on the soap Another World. I think he appeared in, at most, two episodes as a high school kid, never becoming "trapped" into becoming a soap star. From an interview with soap writer Thom Racina:

Nelson Aspen: You have a Brad Pitt soap opera connection. How does Brad Pitt fit into the world of soaps?
Thom Racina: I put him on ANOTHER WORLD.

Nelson Aspen: How did you know Brad Pitt?
Thom Racina: I put up a little sign at Screen Actor’s Guild that said, "Needed: an actor to be a personal assistant. To walk the dog when he needed it. Drive the scripts to the studio..." This kid shows up. He's cute, he’s full of energy and says, "I’m an actor," which of course they all are in L.A. So I hired him. We became very close. He moved in with me, in the maid's room. He had his own life, and yet we became good buddies. My parents loved him, they became the new family he had away from Missouri. Anyway, I came home from DAYS early one day, just in the last few months. I saw him doing this scene with this girl in my living room...

Nelson Aspen: An acting scene?
Thom Racina: Yes, right. I did see him do some other scenes in other various parts of the house. [Laughs] So I went to ANOTHER WORLD a few months later. I settled in to New York. I said to them, "I've got this terrific kid. He can play 18, even though he's 23, we can give him a two year story. And I wrote a two year story for him. They brought him to New York, and he did the one day on ANOTHER WORLD. Then we sat down with The Idiots around the table. Procter & Gamble, NBC, and one after another [they said], 'He can't act, he's not good looking...' Maggie DePriest said he had bad skin. Finally at the end I turned to John Whitesell and said, 'Give me this.' He said, 'I know he's your buddy but I’ve got to tell you Thom, this kid sucks. He'll never be an actor. Tell him to go be a plumber.' I had to go home and tell him. He cried, and I hugged him. I said, 'Listen asshole, you are now going to be able to audition. Before you didn’t have a SAG card. Now you've got it, you did one day, and you've got it. This is my gift to you, now go out and prove me right.' And he did! Had they liked him, he would have been a soap star forever. The universe works in mysterious ways.
here's the link

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 5:51pm

Reminds me of an old Sandra Bernhard joke that still cracks me up: "Angie Harmon recently left Law & Order to persue a career in acting."

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 8:19pm

It doesn't surprise me. They can afford to do anything they want. If he has no more contractual obligations and doesn't feel like doing it any more, then it makes sense. I've always had less of a problem with his acting than with the films in which he's appeared. Same with Angelina Jolie, though I never understood her Oscar win.

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 9:14pm

Jolie's Oscar win--especially over performances as amazing as Chloe Sevigny in BOYS DON'T CRY, Samantha Morton in SWEET AND LOWDOWN, and Catherine Keener in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH--is one of the biggest head-scratchers in Oscar history.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 9:25pm

Toni Collette for Sixth Sense would have been my choice, actually.

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 10:52pm

I was trying to remember who the fifth nominee was, thanks. If I had a vote, it would have gone to Sevigny.

[Q]

Posted: 11/14/11 at 11:10pm

I still think he's a decent guy, and appreciate a lot of the work he's done outside the industry. Besides, it's not as if all of the movie icons of history were great actors.

And I will always love A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, no matter what else he's done.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 7:57am

Actors don't retire. Not real ones, anyway.

See: Langella, Olivier, Plowright, Dench, Smith, Gambon and many more.

Maybe if he's tired of making these ginormous movies, he should get up on a stage and show us what he really can('t) do.

Yawn. Good riddance.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 8:47am

Toni Collette was in Sixth Sense?

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 8:55am

She was the kid's mom.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 12:23pm

I thought he'd already retired.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 12:58pm

Actors don't retire. Not real ones, anyway.

Real actors? You mean like Doris Day and Greta Garbo? Or maybe Gene Hackman, John Gavin and Ron Howard? Not sure how you define a "real actor", but it certainly sounds pretentious.

Even real actors are real people. The unreal actors are real people, too. Some choose to retire and some don't. So what?

Maybe if he's tired of making these ginormous movies, he should get up on a stage and show us what he really can('t) do.

Maybe he sees the futility in doing something he doesn't want to do in order to prove something to those who have already made up their minds. Besides, he said he wants to do things other than acting.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 11/15/11 at 4:59pm

Loved Toni Collete in The Sixth Sense. The scene of her and Haley Joel Osment in the car is beautiful (and of course, M. Night Shyamalan's film will never have that much heart ever again). She or Keener would have been my choices.

As for Pitt, I like him fine in comedic roles and supporting roles that were early in his career (he really has not really gone back to those roles except in Burn After Reading and to a lesser degree Megamind, but that was a voice role), but I definitely do not get invested in movies where he is the dramatic center. Like DiCaprio, he signs to big projects with big directors and great actors supporting him but nothing seems too risky or interesting in the way his earlier roles like 12 Monkeys or True Romance that were smaller but offered him more freedom. Say what you want about Johnny Deep but he has a long list of riskier projects that gave him a lot better showcase of his talents, but not box office or mainstream press (and then he did the Pirates franchise which put his career in another direction).

I did like Pitt as Jesse James but then again the movie was not **really** about him (plus the ensemble of actors in that movie looking back is incredibly impressive). But I thought it was a good, understated performance that was appropriate rather than Benjamin Button where the CGI effects were his performance.