Brad Pitt

William Bradley Pitt, born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and raised in Springfield, Missouri, is one of the most recognizable and enduringly fascinating figures in Hollywood history, an actor of enormous natural talent and a producer of remarkable taste whose career has consistently straddled the divide between mass-market entertainment and uncompromising artistic cinema. Raised in a conservative Baptist family — his father Bill managed a trucking company and his mother Jane was a school counselor — Pitt showed early signs of magnetic personality through student government and the school tennis team at Kickapoo High School. He enrolled at the University of Missouri to study journalism but left just weeks before graduation in 1986 to move to Los Angeles with 325 dollars, taking acting classes under Roy London and working odd jobs including dressing as a chicken costume for El Pollo Loco. His breakout moment arrived with a brief but electrifying appearance in Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise (1991), in which he played the charming, reckless hitchhiker J.D. with physical ease and smoldering charisma that generated an enormous public reaction. His subsequent career balanced superstardom with genuine artistic risk across Se7en (1995), 12 Monkeys (1995, Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor), Fight Club (1999, one of the defining films of the late 20th century co-starring Edward Norton), Snatch (2000), Ocean's Eleven and its sequels (2001-2007), Troy (2004), Babel (2006), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Tree of Life (2011), Moneyball (2011, second Oscar nomination), 12 Years a Slave (2013, which he also produced as Best Picture winner), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and Oppenheimer (2023). His production company Plan B Entertainment has produced multiple Oscar-winning Best Picture films, cementing his status as one of the most consequential producers in contemporary Hollywood.