Brad Pitt has opened up about one of the darkest periods of his life, revealing that overwhelming pain connected to his family left him briefly able to understand suicide in a way he never had before.
The 62-year-old Oscar winner spoke candidly in a new interview with Esquire UK, saying suicidal thoughts had never previously been part of his nature. “I was never suicidal in any way. It just was not my makeup,” Pitt said.
He described himself instead as a lifelong optimist, a quality he said had helped him through difficult periods but had also sometimes led him recklessly into situations because he believed things would work out. Then came one brief period when that optimism failed him. “I just didn’t see a way out,” Pitt recalled, describing emotional pain so intense that the idea of death momentarily registered as relief.
Pitt stressed that he did not intend to act on the thoughts. What struck him, he said, was suddenly understanding why someone in extreme pain might view suicide as an escape. “I understand suicide, in the sense that it’s just relief,” he said.
He added that his own survival instinct quickly took over and pulled him away from that state of mind. When the interviewer asked whether the difficult period involved his children, Pitt replied simply: “Family stuff. We could leave it at that.”
Pitt shares six children with ex-wife Angelina Jolie: Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, Pax, Knox and Vivienne. The former couple separated in 2016 after more than a decade together and two years of marriage. Their divorce was finalized in 2024 following an eight-year legal battle.
Their family relationships have remained strained. Four of the children have sought to drop “Pitt” from their surnames, with Shiloh’s legal name change approved in August 2024. Pitt has largely avoided discussing his children publicly.
A source told People in 2024 that he had “virtually no contact” with his adult children at the time, while his contact with the younger children had also become more limited because of his filming schedule.
The actor also spoke about another profound loss: the death of his mother, Jane Pitt, who died a year ago at age 84. “If you survive the grief, it leaves a gaping hole, but also a deep beauty,” Pitt said. “It’s a painful beauty, but it’s still beauty.”
Brad Pitt
(Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Pitt also revealed that after seven years of sobriety, he has resumed drinking alcohol occasionally. He previously spoke publicly about attending Alcoholics Anonymous after the collapse of his marriage to Jolie and has credited sobriety with helping him rebuild his life.
“I was sober for seven years. And then I went back to drinking,” Pitt said, explaining that he now does so in a more limited way.
He said there had been occasions when he became too confident about his ability to drink and then realized it was not good for him. “Not in large quantities,” he added.
In 2020, Pitt publicly credited fellow actor Bradley Cooper with helping him overcome his struggles with addiction while accepting an award from Cooper at the National Board of Review gala. At the time, Pitt said Cooper had helped him get sober and that his life had been happier since.