Entertainment Weekly - 10.2019

With award-baiting turns in

Ad Astra

and

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

,^

BRAD PITT

, 55, has never been hotter—

and his behind-the-scenes work is

just as influential. The actor-producer

talks to EW about deep space, stardom,

and the next frontier. (Hint: It may be

television.)

BY LEAH GREENBLATT

out into the world”—which in 2019 means not just starring in a pair of films that may well end up domi-nating the coming awards season but also continuing to head up Plan B Entertainment, the boutique production company responsible for a vanguard slate of films, includ-ing

Vice

, Moonlight

, Beautiful Boy

,

and

12 Years a Slave

.

That laugh comes tumbling out

again when he’s asked to find the thread between

Hollywood

’s Cliff,

Astra

(out Sept. 20), though it

often punctuates his conversation with EW about both those roles.

To say that one of the world’s

most beloved and best-known celeb-rities is having a moment 30-plus years into his career feels, at this point, pretty much indisputable. But don’t call it a comeback, or a Brad-aissance; several times over the course of a friendly, sometimes phil-osophical interview he’ll insist that his only goal is “putting stories

BRAD PITT HAS A GREAT LAUGH: a sort of staccato, slow-rolling ah-huh-huh-huh

that makes you

think of surfers and cowboys and movie stars. He uses it more than once to excellent effect as Cliff Booth, the laconic stuntman- cum-sidekick who stumbles into the dark heart of the Manson family in Quentin Tarantino’s showbiz Babylon

Once Upon a

Time...in Hollywood

and not at all

in the lonely-astronaut epic

Ad

Brad

Brad,

Wo r l d