Brad Pitt was in a critical situation and this film saved his career: “It just reinvigorated what I wanted out of this thing”
He’s 61 and has starred in countless acclaimed films, but none marked his life as deeply as this one.
Every artist knows how a single project can define a before and after — both professionally and personally. Dave Bautista and Steven Spielberg are perfect examples of that. But few Hollywood stars have experienced it as profoundly as Brad Pitt, who was going through a serious personal and professional crisis that he managed to overcome thanks to the film Seven.
The David Fincher–directed movie is now a landmark thriller, but right before making it, Pitt was on the verge of collapse. He’s admitted that after a couple of projects he wasn’t proud of, he hit rock bottom in the summer of 1994 — a time, as he put it, when he “needed to disconnect” and wasn’t exactly living a healthy lifestyle.
Pitt at rock bottom
“I’d wake up, smoke a joint, and drink four Cokes without ice — I wouldn’t eat anything.” That’s when his close friend and agent, Cynthia Pett-Dante, appeared like a guardian angel, script in hand — the script for Seven. Pitt read only the first seven pages, and at first, he wasn’t sold. When he told Pett-Dante it seemed like “the usual cliché,” she urged him to finish it and then meet with David Fincher.
Pitt later said that his meeting with Fincher couldn’t have gone better. He was amazed to find “someone who talked about film like no one I’d ever met before,” a moment that reignited his passion for acting. “I got the bug again,” he said. “It made me want to keep going.”
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