Brad Pitt is certainly one of the most renowned actors in the movie industry and most definitely needs no introduction. With chiseled looks, infectious charisma, and the ability to play a wide variety of characters. The Fight Club actor has a successful career full of smash-hit blockbusters such as Babel, The Tree of Life, Fight Club, Inglourious Basterds, and many more.
One of the key traits of Pitt as an actor is how he tends to embody his roles and become one with the character. While it is great to embody one’s role, it invited an unscripted verbal fight scene with Jessica Chastian, as they admittedly lost themselves in their character during an intense scene, of The Tree of Life.
Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain Lost Their Cool On-Screen
Terence Malik’s The Tree of Life is considered to be one the greatest films to be ever created apart from the star-studded cast members, the film featured mesmerizing storytelling, philosophical themes such as existentialism, the importance of relationships, and the cycle of life, compiled with a perfect narrative.
Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain’s portrayal of a married couple was the key attraction in the film, and they lost their temper when she decided to improvise a scene by rubbing pepper on Pitt’s face.
During an exclusive interview with Collider, Jessica Chastain shares how both of them had embodied their character and they went back and forth with their scripted dialogues. However, she lost her cool, as she grabbed a pepper and rubbed it on Brad Pitt’s face and said, “How do you like it!” The scene was improvised and moments later they were fighting while the cameras were rolling.
“And at one point, I don’t know why, what on earth possessed me, but I grabbed the pepper and rubbed it on his face and said, ‘How do you like it!’ And then he grabbed me and all of the sudden we’re like fighting and struggling and when you see, you can see that we both look shocked because it was absolutely real. It wasn’t like Terry said, ‘I want to create a physical violence between the two.’ It’s not even in the script that anything like that happens.”
The scene was so intense and real that Terrence Malik, the director of the film felt it’d be a shame if the improvised scene is not featured in the final version of the film. The film was a masterpiece, and both actors were outstanding in their roles, but Pitt’s role as an abusive father was so convincing that his on-screen kids got traumatized because of it.
Brad Pitt’s Portrayal in The Tree of Life Traumatized His On-Screen Kids
While Brad Pitt is majorly known for his roles and how nice and kind he is towards his co-stars. But his behaviour while portraying his role in The Tree of Life put him in a contradictive situation as it put him in a quite tough and intimidating position in front of his young co-actors.
In the film, he had to portray the role of a mean and abusive father to his three children. The role was mean and had a toll on Pitt. The role was so difficult to portray that Jean Black, Brad Pitt’s make-up artist told Esquire that the actor was essentially playing the role of his real-life father, Bill Pitt.
“Brad’s dad is definitely the powerhouse in that family. Jane’s this wonderful spirit and Bill is a man of few words, but when he talks you’re like, Uh huh. Conscious or not, Brad’s performance in Tree of Life was the reincarnation of his dad in that way.”
He continued that the Fury actor was devastated as he had to act in such a way that was not like him in any sense, often between takes he had to go and comfort his young co-stars.
“It was really difficult for him because he had to be very tough with those children. They weren’t actors. They’d never done anything like that, and so much of the movie was unscripted. Brad had to be mean to them, and that’s not the way he is with children. He made a point of doing things in between scenes to show how he felt about them. But they were terrified of him.”
Nevertheless, the persistence of Brad Pitt and his young co-stars paid off as the film became a commercial and critical success, earning praise from the fans and the critics while earning $61.7 million at the worldwide box office.
