Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the son of Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, a truck company owner. Along with his brother Doug and sister Julie Neal, he grew up in Springfield, Missouri, where the family moved soon after his birth. Pitt was raised a Baptist. He attended Kickapoo High School, where he was involved in sports, debating, student government, and acting. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. He is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pitt dated several of his co-stars, including Robin Givens (Head Of The Class), Jill Schoelen (Cutting Class), Juliette Lewis (Too Young to Die? and Kalifornia), who at sixteen was ten years his junior when they started dating, and Gwyneth Paltrow (Se7en), with whom he had a much-publicized engagement. Pitt also dated actresses Sinitta and Thandie Newton.
Pitt is a vegetarian.
Marriage to Jennifer Aniston
Pitt met Friends actress Jennifer Aniston in 1998 and married her during an enclosed wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. The couple ensured that the ceremony would be a private affair by hiring hundreds of guards to block any attempts of invasion by the paparazzi; just one wedding picture was released to the media. Not long after the wedding, Pitt sued Damiani International, the company which had made the wedding ring he gave Aniston, for selling replica "Brad and Jennifer" rings. According to Pitt, the ring was his design and was to be exclusive. Under the settlement reached in January 2002, Pitt would design jewelry for Damiani that Aniston would model in ads, and the company would stop selling the copies.
Though their marriage was for years considered the rare Hollywood success, rumors of marital problems began circulating, and the Pitts announced their separation on January 7, 2005. As Pitt's marriage to Aniston drew to a close, he and actress Angelina Jolie were involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal in which Jolie was often painted as the "other woman", largely due to their chemistry during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. While Jolie and Pitt both denied any claims of adultery, speculations continued to mount throughout 2004 and early 2005. In an interview with Ann Curry in June 2005, Jolie explained, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."
In early 2005, the concept of a "troubled marriage" - and arguably his own - inspired Pitt to cooperate with photographer Steven Klein for a photoshoot entitled "Domestic Bliss" for W magazine. The spread showed Pitt and Jolie as a 1963 married couple with children. Pitt expressed the desire to tell a darker, truer tale, one that explored the "unidentifiable malaise" that often haunts a seemingly happy couple. "You don't know what's wrong", he remarked, "because the marriage is everything you signed up for." For her part, Aniston later cited the shoot as evidence that Pitt has "a sensitivity chip that's missing."
Aniston filed for divorce on March 25, 2005; the divorce was finalized on October 2, 2005.
Relationship with Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in an event in September 2007One month after Aniston filed for divorce, in April 2005, a set of paparazzi photos emerged that seemed to confirm the rumors of a relationship between Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie. The photos, which were reportedly sold for $500,000, showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer, the pair were seen together with increasing frequency, and the entertainment media dubbed the couple "Brangelina". Two months later, the highly anticipated July 2005 issue of W magazine hit newsstands, featuring Pitt and Jolie posed as a couple.
In July 2005, Pitt accompanied Jolie to Ethiopia, where Jolie adopted her second child, a six-month-old girl named Zahara; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt the child together. In December 2005, it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie's two (adopted) children as his own; per the legal requirements, classified advertisements in the Los Angeles paper Daily Commerce announced the name change request. On January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request, and the children's legal surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt".
On January 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed to People magazine that she was pregnant with Pitt's child. On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, in Swakopmund, Namibia by a scheduled caesarean section. Pitt confirmed that their newly-born daughter will have a Namibian passport, and Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these extremely valuable snapshots. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide – the most expensive celebrity image of all time. All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Jolie and Pitt. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it was the first infant re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds.
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a three-year-old boy from Vietnam, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, (originally Pax Thien Jolie). Since the orphanage does not allow unmarried couples to adopt, Jolie adopted Pax as a single parent, with Pitt later adopting him as his son domestically.
Following media reports suggesting Jolie might be pregnant again, she attended the Independent Spirit Awards 2008 in a close-fitting dress, indirectly confirming those rumors. People quoted a source who confirmed her pregnancy. In May 2008, Jolie confirmed on the Today show that they were expecting twins. On July 12, 2008, Jolie gave birth to the couple's twins, a boy named Knox Léon Jolie-Pitt and a girl named Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt. On that afternoon, Jolie's lawyers, Lavely-Singer registered the domain names KnoxLeon.com and VivienneMarcheline.com, confirming the reports and verifying the twin's names. The next morning, Jolie's Dr. Michel Sussmann confirmed the birth details, Knox weighing 5.03 pounds, and Vivienne 5 pounds, both delivered via an early caesarean section. Knox is named for Pitts' grandfather, and Vivienne's middle name, Marcheline, is the name of Jolie's mother.
Life in New Orleans
The family divides its time between Los Angeles, California and New Orleans, Louisiana. In an interview with the Times-Picayune, while filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pitt said:
I can't describe why we're allowed to live a more normal life (in New Orleans). Living in the French Quarter is a thrill for us. We have some semblance of real family life. People have been very, very gracious with us. If we're on the front deck, people go by and say, 'Hi.' Then they go on their way, very friendly.
In December 2006, Pitt gathered a group of housing professionals together in the Hurricane Katrina-stricken New Orleans to begin planning a project that Pitt calls Make It Right, with the goal of financing and constructing 150 new houses in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. The houses are being designed with an emphasis on sustainability and affordability, with the hope that the project can and will be replicated throughout the city. Thirteen architectural firms are involved in the project, many of which are donating their services. Pitt and philanthropist Steve Bing have each committed to matching $5 million in donations.
Religious views
In an October 7, 2007 interview, Pitt told PARADE that he is no longer a fundamentalist Christian. In this interview, Pitt said:
I always had a lot of questions about the world, even in kindergarten. A big question to me was fairness. If I'd grown up in some other religion, would I get the same shot at Heaven as a Christian has? My mom would come into my room and talk to me. I was very fortunate to have that dialogue with her, but in high school I started to realize that I felt differently from others.
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