Brad Pitt has revealed that he felt suicidal during “one little period” when he was looking for relief from pain related to “family stuff” that he was dealing with at the time.
The 62-year-old actor opened up about the experience during a new interview with Esquire following a discussion about loss and grief, the latter of which Pitt described as “the most leveling of all emotions.” Though Pitt described himself as an eternal optimist who “won the lottery,” even he went through a period when he thought about ending it all.
“I was never suicidal in any way. It just was not my makeup,” he explained. “In fact, if I have any afflictions, it’s probably being a congenital optimist. Which has helped many times, and it’s also gotten me — I’ve walked foolishly head-on into a Mack truck because of my optimism. Or, as my forever-funny friend David Fincher will say, Yeah, you see the glass as half full, but it’s half full of urine.”
Related Video
Pitt continued, “I’ve never been suicidal except for one little period. And in that one little period, I just thought — I just couldn’t — just didn’t see a way out. The pain was so oppressive that — I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel — I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief. And I thought, Oh, okay, now I understand — I understand suicide, in the sense that it’s just relief. It’s just looking for relief from the pain. But I also think we have incredible survival instincts. And for me, that immediately kicked in, but it was just… Listen: This shit ain’t easy.”
Pressed on where the pain was coming from, Pitt said it was “family stuff” and added, “We could leave it at that.”
It’s unclear exactly when this “family stuff” took place, but Angelina Jolie filed for a divorce from Pitt in September 2016 that became official in 2019. In a countersuit filed in 2022 over a French winery they once owned together, Jolie accused Pitt of choking and striking their children on a 2016 plane ride they took just days before she filed for divorce.
According to the filing, Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face.” He was also accused of grabbing “Jolie by the head” and pouring alcohol on both her and the children. While the FBI did investigate the case, they declined to press charges.
In the same 2022 filing, Jolie alleged she had tried to sell her share of the winery to Pitt, but talks broke down after she refused to sign a “nondisclosure agreement that would have contractually prohibited her from speaking outside of court about Pitt’s physical and emotional abuse of her and their children.”
Two years later, the former couple’s second-eldest daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie, legally dropped Pitt from her name. This year, three of their other children have filed paperwork to do the same.
It’s also worth noting that Pitt shared with Esquire that his mother died last year.
Elsewhere in his interview with Esquire, Pitt revealed that he is no longer sober. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he said. Pitt added that he now drinks in a “more restrained manner,” noting, “I can have a few. But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.”
