Brad Pitt's secret past as a drug-addled zombie: Star hid from pressure of fame in a haze of marijuana and booze in the 90s

By Richard Price

PUBLISHED: 19:55 EST, 31 May 2013 | UPDATED: 09:17 EST, 1 June 2013

Tomorrow night, Brad Pitt will stride proudly down the red carpet in London, a protective arm around the shoulder of his fiancée, Angelina Jolie. As statements of support go, it will ring out loud and true.

Not only will Angelina be appearing in public for the first time since announcing her double mastectomy, she is also missing her aunt’s funeral to be by Brad’s side at a seminal moment in his career.

It is no understatement to say Brad’s reputation is riding on the premiere of World War Z, the post-apocalyptic zombie movie he both produces and stars in. The critics are sharpening their knives, with the film being touted as potentially the biggest turkey in cinematic history. 

Now and then: Brad Pitt in 1994 (left) and at an awards ceremony last year

Lucky for Brad, then, that he can count on his glamorous and accomplished fiancée to be there in his hour of need. Fair reward for the unstinting commitment he has shown Angelina and their six children down the years.

Yet it was not always this way. The family man, who has spent the past week in idyllic isolation with Angelina and the children at their £60 million chateau in Provence, was once a drug-addled ‘drifter’ without any purpose or direction.

To whom do we owe this withering assessment? Brad himself, who admitted in a magazine interview last week that he spent much of his seven-year relationship with Jennifer Aniston in a drug-fuelled haze.

‘For a long time I thought I did too much damage — drug damage,’ he said. ‘I was a bit of a drifter. A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I followed that other thing. I spent years f***ing off.’

He claimed that ‘about a decade ago’ — when he was still married to Aniston — he made a ‘conscious change’.

Brad Pitt met Angelina Jolie in 2005, and the couple have been together ever since

‘It was an epiphany; a decision not to squander my opportunities,’ he said. ‘It was a feeling of: “Get up.” Because otherwise, what’s  the point?’

Precisely what drugs he is referring to can only be inferred — though it is an open secret in Hollywood circles that Brad had been an enthusiastic consumer of marijuana for decades.

While it may come as a surprise to his fans, this impossibly handsome leading man has passed countless weeks lazing on a sofa with joint in hand and little desire to do anything else.

Despite being perhaps the most desired man on Earth, for several years he stumbled from relationship to relationship, never settling down or finding happiness.

At the start of his career in the Nineties, he was in a passionate relationship with actress Juliette Lewis. The two bonded over a shared fondness for marijuana.

The couple were renowned for holing themselves up in their bungalow off Melrose Avenue in LA and getting high for days on end.

It is widely accepted in Hollywood that when he played a hopeless ‘stoner’ in the 1993 film True Romance, Brad was, in effect, simply playing his marijuana-addled self.

Lewis, who admitted being a regular user of cocaine as well, also introduced him to the controversial Scientology religion. The religion’s leaders were ‘seriously excited’ about adding Brad Pitt to their roster of A-list followers — but just at the point where he was poised to join, he and Lewis split up and Brad backed away.

Good time guys: He may have calmed down a little, but Pitt can still raise hell with friend Geoerge Clooney when he wants to

Brad then went through a period when he drifted between relationships, seeking solace in drugs and the fairer sex.

In 1994, he made his first attempt at a serious relationship, settling down with Gwyneth Paltrow for three years. But after they split, he drifted again.

‘I got really sick of myself at the end of the Nineties,’ he said. ‘I was hiding out from the celebrity thing, smoking way too much dope, sitting on the couch and just turning into a doughnut, and I really got irritated with myself.’

In 2000, when he married Friends star and golden girl Jennifer Aniston, he finally seemed to have it all.

But it was not long before Brad again disappeared into a haze of drugs and booze. Aniston, too, has admitted to smoking dope during the relationship.

The actor has since suggested that he was depressed — taking refuge in being stoned while trying to ‘pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t’.
Enter, in 2005, Angelina Jolie.

You would not expect her to be concerned by his drug-taking past, considering she is widely known to have dabbled with heroin in her younger years. However, the wild child who had cavorted with a married Mick Jagger was undergoing a character transformation. 

With a budget of a reported $250m, Pitt needs his new film, World War Z to be a big hit

These days, she barely drinks, is a tireless charity campaigner and has attained worldwide respect.
Brad’s own transformation has been less convincing. He will be 49 this year, yet there is no shortage of evidence that he still has plenty of growing up to do.

In 2009, his great friend Quentin Tarantino happily boasted on U.S. chat shows about downing six bottles of wine with Brad at Chateau Miraval, the actor’s vineyard in the south of France. Brad then produced ‘smoking apparatus’ made out of a cola can.

On another occasion, Tarantino told how the same year he saw Brad ‘pull out a brick of hash’ and offer him a piece of it.

By this stage, Brad already had three biological children with Angelina, as well as a further three the couple had adopted, but he used to leave Angelina and the children at the chateau in France and visit his great  friend George Clooney at his Lake Como home, where the pair would party for days at a time.

They were at it again at a bar in London last year, when they got so drunk they both needed help to walk to their cars. Hardly the clean-living family man Pitt has been seeking to portray.

Then there was the occasion in 2008 when Angelina gave birth to their twins, Knox and Vivienne, at Lenval Hospital in Nice. After they checked out, cleaners found beer bottles discarded on the side and a dustbin full-to-overflowing with empty Heineken cans.

And while Brad recently spoke of how he now loves nothing more than being surrounded by his family, visitors to their homestead say he tends to delegate responsibility for the children to a well-drilled team of nannies.

Pitt is quite the family man these days, and has 6 children with Jolie

Why, then, does he feel the need for this PR campaign to paint him as a hands-on father?

The reality, according to industry observers, is that his female fans are ageing with him, and he needs the support and admiration of the ‘soccer mom generation’ if he is to carry on as a bankable actor.

He has only had one bona fide box-office hit, Moneyball, in the past six years, and has recently acknowledged that his sex symbol status has a sell-by date.

While he has been chasing awards with a series of worthy roles, Tinseltown is becoming restless about his failure to bring in big bucks.

Hence the importance of World War Z. Rumoured to have cost £250 million — making it the most expensive film in history — it has had repeated rewrites and reshoots, producing horror stories of waste.

At one stage, an entire day’s shooting had to be binned because they had failed to bring enough food for the 750-strong cast.

The reality is that while Brad is capable of being a slick PR operator, in day-to-day life he retains his somewhat detached character.

Angelina, in contrast, is renowned for her common touch, and on a recent trip to a refugee camp in blazing sunshine she declined to wear sunglasses because it would appear rude. Brad rarely takes his sunglasses off in public, even at night.

Hazy days: Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have both admitted to smoking marijuana during their marriage

His supporters claim he is learning from Angelina. Having witnessed her ‘heroic’ decision to undergo a double mastectomy, they say he is a changed man.

We have heard this before, of course — but there are signs he may get there in the end.

‘Brad has changed a lot since he met Angelina, but she has also turned a blind eye to some of his less endearing habits,’ says Jen Paul, editor of the website Bohomoth and a neighbour of the Jolie-Pitts in France.

‘Brad is so insulated from reality by his fame that I don’t think he sees the real picture. Has he really changed? I’d believe it more if Angelina was saying so, not Brad.

‘There’s a big effort going on to rebrand him at the moment. But in the long run he’ll be judged by his behaviour, not his words.’

The jury is still out. Brad could certainly start by making good on his promises — and turning his fiancée into a bride.