Brad Pitt, 62, said something no one expected to hear from him.
In a cover interview with Esquire, published on August 10, 2026, the actor confirmed that he is no longer sober: after seven years without touching alcohol, he now allows himself a few glasses of wine, although he insists that he no longer drinks as he used to. But that was not what shocked people the most.
Pitt said that he went through a brief period in which he felt there was no way out, and described that feeling with an image that stays with you: he said he felt “the cold steel of the bullet” in his head, as a kind of relief at the thought of dying.
When asked whether that pain had to do with his six children—Maddox, Pax, Knox, Zahara, Shiloh, and Vivienne, all estranged from him after his divorce from Angelina Jolie—he replied with just two words: “Family stuff” (Family matters). Nothing more.
The actor began his sobriety journey in 2016, after the incident on the private plane with Jolie that marked the breakdown of the marriage. Nearly a decade later, he is still carrying the same wounds.