Famous fair president talks about Venice Biennale’s ‘love affair’ with the Arab world

DUBAI: We all hit rock bottom at some point. If you’re Brad Pitt – perhaps the most famous actor on the planet – it’s just a lot more public. While the lows of Pitt’s personal life may have been covered in painfully intimate detail on every page of gossip, his journey to self-improvement has been far more private. For the past six years, he’s done the job – exhaustively – and now, with “Bullet Train,” his first starring role in three years, he’s ready to make fun of it.

“I think that’s what drew me to the role, honestly,” Pitt told Arab News. “This man trying to grow – but also somewhat regress – on his way to becoming a better person. My own experience with self-help and therapy has taken the (mickey) out of that.

“There are times when you have an epiphany and you think you’ve figured out the whole egg, and then you get into a pile of shit the next day. That was making fun of it, and I took a lot of it from it. fun,” he continues.

Pitt is, of course, one of the top box office draws in the world and has been for about 30 years. He is also one of Hollywood’s most admired actors and received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2020 for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s film ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, in which he starred. the double of a famous actor.

So it’s only fitting that he continues this by teaming up with his former stuntman David Leitch, who replaced Pitt in films such as “Fight Club”, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Troy” in the 90s and the early 2000s and became one of the most sought after directors in the world, helming ‘John Wick’, ‘Deadpool 2’, ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbes and Shaw’ and now ‘Bullet Train’.

“We saw that relationship in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ and it’s not wrong that actors and their stunt doubles can have a great bond. Brad and I had that. We were friends,” Leitch says. Now we’ve come full circle where I’m at a stage in my career where I’m also an artist, and he appreciates my work. Of course, I already appreciated his work. Doing this together was such a great experience.

“It was really nice to get back with him, but this time with him as the boss,” says Pitt.

“Bullet Train” is based on a bestselling Japanese novel. It tells the story of five assassins who all end up on the express train from Tokyo to Morioka with little chance of them all surviving to the end. Pitt plays “Ladybug,” an eternally unlucky man fresh off a sanity sabbatical who tries to keep his inner calm in a situation that refuses to allow it, spouting as many positive aphorisms as he can muster.

“Ladybug’s lines really sound like a 22-year-old figuring himself out,” Pitt co-star Joey King tells her.

“Exactly. The sad thing is pretty much where I’m at in life,” Pitt replies.

Pitt and company shot the film during lockdown in 2020. While ‘Bullet Train’ is set in Japan, it was shot on a single soundstage in Southern California, inside a built train for this purpose which was flanked on either side by LED screens which showed footage shot on the actual bullet train in Japan. It was so realistic that some people on set would have gotten motion sickness.

For Pitt, the film wasn’t just a chance to reconnect with his old friend Leitch, it was also an opportunity to create a surrogate family to help each other through the crushing loneliness of COVID isolation, each trying to take turns making others laugh and ruin another take with constant improvisation.

“It was before the vaccination, so we had all these protocols and gauntlets that we had to go through just to be able to film this. We were basically in a bubble. It worked because of everyone’s high level of talent, which elicited so many good laughs,” says Pitt.

Pitt even recruited some of his own friends, including Sandra Bullock, whom he called personally to ask her to appear in the film.

“Sandy is a dear old friend; someone i can call for any favor and she is always there. She’ll give up everything she does, she’s done me a huge favor,” Pitt says. “When it happened, we thought it would be really cool to call her again for another favor. She did, but this time she said I had to do something back – it is how I ended up appearing in his enchanting film “The Lost City.” I liked this idea that we could cross paths with each other’s projects.

Beyond the jokes, self-mockery, and reunion with old friends, Pitt even quietly found himself connecting to the seemingly goofy action-comedy’s deeper themes.

“There’s this undercurrent that questions the nature of fate and the constant battle between personal will and manifestation against the greater powers at play. It really struck me. It was combined, of course, with the cinematic language of David Leitch – this mixture of comedy and ultra-violence,” says Pitt.

Pitt wasn’t just focused on himself, however. Part of his journey, both professionally and personally, has been to make meaningful connections with others and help lift them, whether it’s people he briefly meets or his co-stars. . In a low-key way, that may be his life’s mission at this point.

King, for example, found a true mentor in Pitt, she says. As a 22-year-old Hollywood sensation with nearly 20 million Instagram followers, King was grateful to have someone to help her navigate the increasingly convoluted contours of fame at a time when apps such as TikTok have made things more emotionally taxing for megastars than ever before.

“I was going through a tough time one day, and I was expressing it to some of my cast mates. Brad is someone who’s been through a lot in his life. He walked around the block. I’ve very lucky to have someone like him, with his life experience – especially his experience with people with opinions on his life,” King told Arab News. “It was really helpful to hear someone like him explaining why that noise should be drowned out and how he does it. It was really, really nice to talk to someone like that.

And Pitt’s performance in “Bullet Train” holds a lesson for all of us: don’t take yourself too seriously.

“I play an idiot,” he says. “And the jerk is the most fun role to play, hands down.”