Um, really? Brad Pitt's Esquire interview has even more surprising revelations — this time from Jean Black, a makeup artist and friend who has worked with Pitt, 49, on nearly all of his films since 1990. Speaking with Esquire, Black sheds new light on Pitt's legendary meeting with Angelina Jolie on the 2004 set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, when he was still married (apparently unhappily) to Jennifer Aniston.
"I think Brad was ready to soar when he met Angie," says Black, who then quickly clarified of Aniston, whom Pitt divorced in 2006: "This is not to say anything negative about Jennifer. I was part of that and I know that he and Jennifer are very good friends and he cared deeply for her."
"But in Angie," Black continued, "he saw a very adventurous person who was grabbing on to life and taking it to its nth degree. It was intriguing because I felt Brad had that in him and wanted to unleash it."
Whether or not Pitt and Aniston, 43, are actually "very good friends" these days, the World War Z actor himself intimated to Esquire that he was deeply depressed about ten years ago during his marriage to Aniston. Saying he'd done major "drug damage" to himself, Pitt said he was a "drifter . . . I spent years f–king off." About ten years ago, all that changed.
"It was an epiphany — a decision not to squander my opportunities," he explains. "It was a feeling of, 'Get up.' Because otherwise, what's the point?"
