Brad Pitt is among the most successful actors of all time, but he still can’t get over his performance in one of his numerous films. More specifically, he is bothered by how he executed his role in the second half of the movie, which also starred Bruce Willis.
There are many things that would point to the achievements that Pitt has had as an actor, but perhaps none can eclipse the caliber of motion pictures that he has featured in. As of June 2023, there were a total of 32 Brad Pitt films that grossed over $100 million at the box office.
Pitt had to make his own way in the beginning, nonetheless, having built himself up from scratch. One of his first ever movies was the Ridley Scott classic Thelma & Louise, where he played an attractive cowboy hitchhiker named J.D. This would turn out to be the breakout role of his career.
Despite the picture being produced on a budget of around $17 million, he only got paid $6,000 for the role. He has also not been immune to the occasional commercial flop. One of Pitt’s worst box office earners ever was The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which all the same managed to rake in $15 million.
For all this success, Pitt remains partially unhappy with how he delivered his character in one of the only two movies that he and Willis have featured in together.
Brad Pitt Starred Alongside Bruce Willis In The Movie 12 Monkeys
Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis were two of the main stars in the 1995 sci-fi film 12 Monkeys by director Terry Gilliam. In the movie, it’s the year 2035, and most of humanity has been wiped out by a terrible virus. People have to live underground to survive.
Willis played James Cole, a prisoner chosen for a mission: He has to go back in time to the year 1996 to gather information about the virus. The goal is to find a cure and prevent the outbreak. They suspect a group called the “Army of the Twelve Monkeys” is responsible.
However, something goes wrong, and Cole ends up in the wrong year. He arrives in 1990, six years before the virus takes over the world. There, he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, played by Madeleine Stowe, a smart psychiatrist. Cole has to convince Railly about the impending disaster while simultaneously dealing with the challenges of time travel.
Pitt featured as Jeffrey Goines, a crazy and eccentric mental patient who becomes a central character in the story.
What Did Brad Pitt Hate About His Performance In The Second Half Of 12 Monkeys?
Brad Pitt’s role in 12 Monkeys was deemed to be so good, that it actually earned him the very first Academy Award nomination of his career. Even so, he was not too satisfied with his performance in the second half of the film. It was a completely different story for the first half, which he felt was perfect.
“I nailed the first half of 12 Monkeys, [but] I got the second half all wrong,” Pitt told The New York Times in December 2019. In his words, there was a snare in the script that he wasn’t able to decipher in his execution of his part.
“That performance bothered me because there was a trap in the writing,” he continued. “It’s not the writing’s fault, but it was something that I couldn’t figure out.” According to the actor, there was a genuineness missing from that second half.
“I knew in the second half of the film I was playing the gimmick of what was real in the first half — until the last scene — and it bugged the [expletive] out of me,” Pitt added.
Is Brad Pitt Disappointed In Any Other Of His Performances On The Big Screen?
Since he made his big screen debut in 1987, Brad Pitt has featured in a very long list of both small and big scale movies. It perhaps says a lot about his skills and talent as an actor that out of all these, one of his biggest disappointments involved a role that saw him nominated for an Oscar.
Even so, Pitt’s second half performance in 12 Monkeys is not the only one he harbors a level of regret over. As a matter of fact, he is even more disappointed in how he played the titular role in Wolfgang Petersen’s epic historical war film Troy in 2004.
Pitt’s interviewer in the same New York Times conversation pointed out that around this time, his career seemingly took on a completely new trajectory. The actor agreed wholeheartedly.
“It was really a turn on Troy. I was disappointed in it,” Pitt said. He disclosed that he only took on the role out of obligation, because he had pulled out of another movie by the same studio. Following his unsatisfactory performance, he swore to only follow his heart from there on out.
