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He is one of the few men to have been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive twice.
But Brad Pitt reportedly wasn’t a fan of the coveted designation when he first appeared on the iconic cover in 1995.
The future Oscar winner, now 60, had just come off two big hits from the previous year: Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall.
And now, in a new memoir from Legends director Edward Zwick, the filmmaker reveals that becoming a sex symbol soured Pitt’s mood.
“I was… unhappy when People magazine named him the sexiest man of the year (sic), something I don’t even take credit for,” Zwick, 71, says in Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood. , through Variety.
It’s unclear whether Pitt and Zwick’s tempestuous working relationship on Legends Of The Fall might have influenced how the rising star reacted to celebrating her appearance.
In his memoirs, the filmmaker described how Pitt “became nervous every time he was about to film a scene that required him to show deep emotion.”
The discomfort with the production was there from the beginning.
After Pitt stepped in to play the role of Tristan Ludlow, which was originally going to be played by his future Interview co-star Tom Cruise before leaving the film, he apparently had such a bad experience at the first table that he read that his agent He supposedly called the director. “To say Brad wanted to quit.”
Zwick went on to say that Pitt could be “volatile when angry” and they disagreed about how emotionally open his character should be.
‘Brad had grown up with men who controlled his emotions; I thought the point of the novel (Legends of the Fall) was that a man’s life was the sum of his pains. (…) However, the more I pressured Brad to reveal himself, the more he resisted. So I kept pushing and Brad backed off,” Zwick wrote.
He recalled a particularly tense moment on set when he criticized Pitt’s performance in front of the film crew, rather than speaking to him privately, which, in retrospect, he called “a stupid and embarrassing provocation.”
‘The considered move would have been to tell the crew to take five and for the two of us to talk it over. But I felt very desperate and I wasn’t willing to give in,” Zwick continued.
The two began yelling and cursing at each other, and the director claims they even threw chairs at each other, although he couldn’t remember who threw the first one.
The painful experience of making the film may have been highlighted by Brad’s People magazine cover, as he sports long hair and a goatee, reminiscent of his rugged look from Legends Of The Fall.
Despite their usual bickering, Zwick also emphasized that after each explosion the two would “make up and get serious about it.”
He also praised the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star as “a frank and direct person, funny and capable of great joy.” He was never less than completely committed to doing the best he could.’
However, Pitt ultimately ended his time on production on another sour note, as he was dissatisfied with the final cut of Legends Of The Fall because he “felt it had downplayed his character’s madness,” Zwick wrote.
“In fact, I had only cut a single shot of the scene where Tristan has a fever and screams as the waves wash over him on the schooner,” he continued.
But it was a photo he loved and it would have been wrong to leave it up, and I should have done it. Apologies, Brad.
Pitt also had a difficult experience with Interview with the Vampire, which he admitted in a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
After the interviewer noted that he looked “miserable” in the film, Pitt responded: “I am miserable. Six months in the fucking darkness. Contact lenses, makeup, I’m playing the bitch.’
He clarified that he was a fan of his character Louis de Pointe du Lac as portrayed in Anne Rice’s iconic novel, but thought the film version polished the most interesting parts of the character while intensifying the more salacious aspects of Tom Cruise. character Lestat de Lioncourt, forcing him instead to be a mere observer.
Despite Pitt’s displeasure with his People cover, he was again named Sexiest Man Alive for the magazine’s 2000 cover.
Only George Clooney and Johnny Depp have also been named Sexiest Man Alive twice, although Richard Gere earned the designation in 1999 after previously appearing with his then-wife Cindy Crawford on the cover when the magazine temporarily changed the issue to The sexiest couple in the world.