Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt is an American actor and producer whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly his 2020 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award win for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and his 2014 Best Picture Academy Award win as the producer of Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. He was born William Bradley Pitt on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, into a Southern Baptist working-class family. His father William Alvin Pitt was a Springfield, Missouri-area trucking-company manager, and his mother Jane Etta Hillhouse was a school counselor. The 1964 family relocation to Springfield, Missouri (when Brad was an infant) launched his early-career path.

His education at the University of Missouri (1982–1986; without earning a degree, after he left two credits short of his B.A. in Journalism) launched his early-career path. His 1986 Los Angeles arrival and his subsequent late-1980s American TV-and-film career (across multiple American TV guest-star appearances, particularly his 1987 first credited TV appearance in NBC's Another World daytime soap opera) produced his early-career American TV public profile.

His 1991 supporting role as J.D. in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (alongside Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) launched his early-1990s American film public profile. His subsequent 1990s American film career produced multiple defining American films — particularly Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It (1992), Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire (1994, opposite Tom Cruise), Edward Zwick's Legends of the Fall (1994), Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995, earning his first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination), David Fincher's Se7en (1995, opposite Morgan Freeman), and David Fincher's Fight Club (1999, opposite Edward Norton).

His 2000s American film career produced multiple defining American films — particularly Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven (2001) and the subsequent Ocean's franchise sequels, his 2004 reprisal of the Greek mythological hero Achilles in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, and David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). His 2019 lead role as Cliff Booth in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood won him the 2020 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He was married to Jennifer Aniston (2000–2005), and to Angelina Jolie (2014–2024 divorce), with whom he has six children (three biological and three adopted).

His name Brad is the English short form of Bradley (from the Old English place-name meaning "broad meadow"). Brad has been a popular American boys' name across the mid-to-late 20th century.