Monday, October 19, 2026






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“That’s not true ... It’s fun to see certain arms of the press kind of flop around,” said Carswell. “They’re so anxious to just get a name and when we sign a non-disclosure agreement, protecting the buyer’s privacy, we do not utter a word and give any clues. So, in the absence of giving a clue, they kind of pulled something out of the air that’s not true.”

He added that throughout the process of finding a buyer for Jolie’s home, background checks were done for security and to avoid “wannabes” who want to see celebrity homes but have no real intention of buying the property.

“Part of my job as a listing agent is to prevent that from happening, only bonafide buyers who are qualified and that’s what we did,” said Carswell.

When asked if the Maria actress was happy with the $24.75 million sale of the property, Carswell told Real Talk, “Doubly so. Quite. The ending was quite the climax after the journey we had been through on the market. It’s a difficult market presently in Los Angeles, which is always just temporary until things go back up the rollercoaster.”

“We had had enough of that challenge and then it ended quite well for our client, so she was doubly happy,” he concluded.




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Monday, October 5, 2026



From left: Bill Thompson, Nycoi Jones, Jim Balfanz, Emily Baeza, Pierce Cedillo, Octavia Spencer, Angelina Jolie, Saniya Parray and Hank Unger. Those in yellow and red jackets are AmeriCorps members serving a second year of service with City Year Los Angeles. (‘The Outsiders’)

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Sunday, October 4, 2026

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Wednesday, September 30, 2026









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Tuesday, September 29, 2026




Zahara pictured above earlier this month

On Monday, a Los Angeles judge granted the 21-year-old’s petition to legally change her name from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie, according to court documents obtained by Page Six.

“There being no objections, the petition for change of name is granted,” the Sept. 28 minute order states.

“The Decree is signed and filed,” the order continues. “The Petitioner’s name is changed from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie.”

Zahara’s attorney, Peter Kenneth Levine, appeared remotely for Monday morning’s hearing, according to the filing.

Judge Virginia Keeny presided over the hearing at Los Angeles Superior Court’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

A second source close to the “Maleficent” star exclusively said in response, “Today’s hearing was required by law and scheduled months ago by the L.A. court system. It’s a new low to have his camp to spin a conspiracy theory, disavow responsibility for his conduct, and attack his own child. Keep in mind, his daughter has had the grace not to discuss the details of his behavior in public.”


Knox, seen in Los Angeles earlier this month, dropped Pitt from his last name on his high school diploma.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s son Knox dropped “Pitt” from his last name on his high school diploma.

The teenager, who turns 18 on July 12, used the name “Knox Jolie” on his certificate after graduating from Fusion Academy in Los Angeles earlier this month, a source exclusively told Page Six.

A third source exclusively told Page Six, “Angelina participated in years of family therapy with Brad and the children for everyone to try to heal after the events that led her to file for divorce.”

“If he isn’t close to the kids, it’s because of the harm that was done,” the insider added. “He wasn’t honest about his actions, and it affected the trust between them. It’s been very hard for the kids. No one knows, except them, how bad it has been.”

The source continued: “The children are now adults and make their own decisions, which deserve respect. If they choose to distance themselves from him, it comes from that pain and harm. It’s really horrible that he has tried to paint himself as a victim. When will people start asking real questions about what happened to the kids?”
Pax, pictured above in January

“Pax still has a relationship with his dad’s side of the family and continues to spend time with them,” a source exclusively told Page Six. “He recently joined his family as they went out to dinner and celebrated his cousin Sydney’s engagement to Archimede Jerome.”

According to the insider, Brad’s sister Julie Pitt Neal also attended the gathering, along with his niece Reagan Pitt and numerous other close family members.

Despite Pax’s close relationship with his father’s side of the family, he “doesn’t have much of a relationship with Brad,” a second source exclusively told Page Six.


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Saturday, September 26, 2026





Vivienne (left) and Knox Jolie at street fair in Los Angeles, California. GuessWhoISaw / BACKGRID (2)

In photographs taken on Saturday, Sept. 19, the 18-year-old, whom Jolie, 51, welcomed with ex-husband Brad Pitt, can be seen selling her original artwork at a local street fair in Los Angeles. Vivienne, who was joined by her twin brother Knox at the event, operated under the name of her art project, “The Tulip Fields.”

The budding artist was busy during the entirety of the event as she spoke with clients and sold prints, stickers and birthday cards. Knox, who was sporting his signature colorful hair and a pair of floral embroidered jeans, helped his sister during the event by assisting her with setup and taking photographs.


Knox (left) and Vivienne Jolie. GuessWhoISaw / BACKGRID

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Friday, September 25, 2026







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Monday, September 21, 2026




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Sunday, September 20, 2026






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Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek Pinault are grateful to have each other at this stage in their lives.

Without Blood (in theaters now) stars Hayek, 60, and Demián Bichir as two people reuniting in the wake of war and trauma. Jolie, 51, adapted and directed the intimate adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s 2002 novella of the same name.

The conversations on set between actress and director “were delicious” and “very organic,” Hayek tells PEOPLE. “I love her mind and I get her. So I think when you know somebody gets you, you feel safe and you can be whoever you are in whatever circumstances.”

“I think it’s so nice we met at this later stage in our life,” says Jolie, who costarred with Hayek in 2021’s Marvel Cinematic Universe hit Eternals. “Because we’ve been through so many similar things, experienced different things, and somehow have landed as older women in a very similar place.”

“Even though I’m much older than her, by the way,” quips Hayek.

“Not that much older!” responds the mother of six with a laugh. “To appreciate that friendship and that bond and that understanding — I haven’t had that kind of a connection in my life.”

Hayek agrees: “It’s hard to find that connection. And I think that’s what part of the movie is also about, how difficult it is to communicate, to connect.”

In Without Blood, Hayek’s Nina and Bichir’s Tito confront each other over an act of violence amid an unspecified war, discussing its many ramifications decades later. Its subject matter inspired plenty of unfiltered conversations between Jolie and Hayek on the film’s Italian set.

“Sometimes we would start passionately screaming at each other,” recalls Hayek when asked about her dynamic with her director. “Then I start crying and she hugs me, then we’re laughing nonstop. And from the outside, I could see people say, ‘What’s going on?’”

The mother of one adds, “I can say whatever. She’s never offended because it’s coming from me. And we’re talking about issues, and then we start crying because we’re moved, not because we made each other cry... And then we say something stupid and we start cracking up.”

At the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Without Blood, Hayek told PEOPLE she was directing a new project that would see her reuniting with Jolie, with the latter in a producing role.
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Friday, September 18, 2026








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Tuesday, September 15, 2026








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Monday, September 14, 2026




Angelina Jolie has been cast in a new political thriller directed by Doug Liman, reuniting the duo behind Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

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“There has never been any real understanding of what happened that caused her to file for divorce, or the years that followed,” says a Jolie source. “For a decade she has kept silent, so not to disparage the father of her children. She has kept a dignified silence even while she was being attacked with misinformation.”

“There’s very little communication right now” between Pitt and his children, says a source close to the actor. “It’s a tragedy.”

Jolie has “been looking forward to this for a while. For years, so much of her life was centered in Los Angeles,” the source adds. “She’s doing really well. She feels very inspired creatively and loves having a lot going on. For a long time, her focus was very much on the kids and she wasn’t working much. Now that they’re older and have their own lives, she has more time to focus on work again.”

Despite the contentious split, the first Jolie source adds, the actress “is forgiving. She wishes him health and happiness. She just wants to be left alone.”
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Wednesday, September 9, 2026









L'Officiel

Angelina Jolie: A Life Without Borders

With her children grown and a new creative vision taking shape, Angelina Jolie is embracing a life guided by art, purpose, and the freedom to explore what comes next.

Published 09.09.2026 by Yohana Desta


Bangles LARA SONMEZ and DINOSAUR DESIGNS Earrings ANGELINA’S OWN

PHOTOGRAPHY Norman Jean Roy

STYLED BY Carolina Orrico

Angelina Jolie sits peacefully in a room in Los Angeles, the city where she was born and, at present, cannot wait to leave. She’s surrounded by moving boxes, flanked to her right by her beloved rottweiler, Dusty, who is lying by the window, backlit by the glowing sun of a late July morning.

“It’s the end of a certain time for me,” the movie star and humanitarian says over Zoom. Now that all six of her kids are adults (her youngest children, fraternal twins Knox and Vivienne, turned 18 in July), Jolie is free to live wherever she likes. For the Oscar winner—who is as famous for toplining films ranging from Girl, Interrupted to Disney’s Maleficent as she is for her humanitarian work, visiting conflict zones and drawing attention to refugee crises as well as leading initiatives through her Cambodia-based nonprofit, the Maddox Foundation—the whole world is once again her veritable oyster.

The first order of business is expanding and opening new global locations of Atelier Jolie, the creative house she opened in 2023, in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s SoHo home and studio in downtown New York. On a rainy afternoon in July, the day before Jolie’s interview, the atelier feels cozy and welcoming. Anyone can stroll into Atelier Jolie, which opens into a small art gallery with works by Bing Lee and Janette Beckman on display (as well as beautifully preserved wall art by Basquiat), then linger in the café, where refugee chefs dreamt up a menu that includes Syrian ma’amoul cookies and pistachio baklava, lounging on sumptuous leather furniture and thumbing through an array of art books under a generous skylight.


Dress ATELIER JOLIE Bangles LARA SONMEZ, DINOSAUR DESIGNS, and LO COLLECTIONS X ALEX AND TRAHANAS Ring LARA SONMEZ


When it opened, the Atelier was heralded as a serious entrée to the fashion world, debuting with a ready-to-wear collection designed by Gabriela Hearst and slinking its way into the niche carved out by brands like The Row. It has since evolved from retail and transformed into a thoughtful sanctuary for artisans and makers across mediums. Fashion, Jolie admits, “was never my central interest.”

“There was a big discussion about sustainability,” says Jolie, whose personal style has evolved over the years from punky goth to glamorous leather goth to quiet luxury with goth-lite traces, like the fine black sweater she wears during our interview. “It became obvious to me that I didn’t want to be pushing people merely to consume. My main focus is welcoming visitors who want to learn, create, and be in community. Anyone who contributes by attending and visiting gives back to the artists who come in. Our doors are open to all, and I love when new visitors continue to discover and join us.”

The Atelier has since grown into a hub for artist residencies, public talks, classes, and offerings such as a Pan-African dining concept called Tatale, created by chef Akwasi Brenya-Mensa. On the night I attend, the multi-course menu includes delicious reimaginings of chichinga beef suya and chin chin cheesecake. New locations of Atelier Jolie will open before the end of the year, shifting to meet the needs of each local community.

Jolie is also excited to see this month’s release of Without Blood, the fifth feature in her directorial oeuvre. Starring Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir, the film is based on the Alessandro Baricco book of the same name and follows a pair of survivors reflecting on opposite sides of a conflict through a series of restrained monologues. “The first day after I went home, I had a breakdown because I had held those emotions for so long,” Hayek Pinault told L’OFFICIEL in 2025. But she trusted Jolie, whom she befriended on the set of Marvel’s Eternals in 2021, describing her as a “genius” director who also wrote beautiful material. “This was the easiest time that I’ve ever had, just automatically memorizing lines without effort.”

Without Blood offers a different vantage point on war compared to Jolie’s last few films, such as In the Land of Blood and Honey and Unbroken, which take the audience into the thick of violence. This film is a post-conflict narrative, looking at the reality—and possibility—of what happens when some of the dust settles. “It doesn’t wrap up with some Hollywood ending,” she says. “But I think it’s comfortable for people who like to sit with things that feel true.”


Dress FENDI COUTURE Earrings throughout ANGELINA’S OWN


L’OFFICIEL: Let’s talk about Atelier Jolie. What do you think worked in these first few years? And what ended up having to evolve?

ANGELINA JOLIE: I didn’t know exactly what it was when I opened the doors. My thought was to open a space and gift areas to different thinkers and creatives. I watched Prune Nourry [a French multidisciplinary artist] move in and make the top floor a studio for herself and do monthly talks. I witnessed the refugee chefs at Eat Offbeat [New York’s immigrant training-focused food venture] find different ways to bring their culture to people daily. Things that have to do with community—like the talks, the dinners, and the gallery space—seemed to naturally push forward more than the fashion. Offering the space on a rotating basis to makers from around the world was more exciting than having a daily traditional shop. One of our first artists in residence was textile artist and designer Zolaykha Sherzad, who founded Zarif Design, a fashion and fine crafts company based in Kabul that reflects the rich Afghan cultural heritage of traditional silk weaving, chapan-striped cotton, and embroidery. All products are made in Afghanistan, giving the women involved an opportunity to have a business and show their craft. We have a designer from Rwanda coming in September. I am looking forward to seeing how they make the space their own.

LO: When I first visited, fashion was the focal point; there were clothes on display. But the evolution makes sense.

AJ: I find it much more interesting to encourage people to learn a new skill, buy pieces of art, meet international makers, or upcycle their own clothing. You can bring your clothes into the Atelier and redo them, take a sewing class, things like that. I learned myself how I would better approach art and clothes—I took screen printing and did a little felting. I haven’t had the opportunity to live in New York for a long period since the Atelier opened. As soon as I can be there more, I’ll be a regular at the classes.

LO: So, are you planning to be in New York more in the next chapter of your life?

AJ: Out of the States more, I think. The hope for the Atelier was always to be global; Brazil might become the first space that we open outside of the U.S. The idea would be to visit the different locations around the world and meet local artists and makers. I’m going to get back to doing more hands-on work with my foundation in Cambodia and my field work. I don’t really plan to have a base. I’d like to have a home base for my family, a place where some of the mom stuff and the family photos are. And then I’d like to be a bit nomadic for a while. My home in Cambodia will also be a residency a few months out of the year for Khmer culture.

LO: What kind of timeline do you envision for the new Atelier Jolie locations?

AJ: A few will open quite soon. We’re talking to teams in Vienna and Cambodia. There is not a country I wouldn’t consider working in. The idea is that wherever it is in the world, it’s always run locally and it’s theirs to benefit from, because we’re a nonprofit. When I worked as a diplomat, I would see that there was so much focus on charity and aid and there wasn’t enough focus on supporting business and independence, so I wanted to build a model that would grow other people’s careers and community.

LO: You already have the dinner series. Are there any other projects or events you’re hoping to launch at the future Ateliers?

AJ: I’ll be most excited when I see these regular residencies from around the world. A misconception about the Atelier is that it’s this private space. There are things within it that are private, but the absolute majority is completely open to the public. All the classes, the dinner series, some of the talks, the gallery. I’m looking forward to seeing more people using it. And because it’s a collective, it really is as much as people make it. I think today, the average person can tell when something is created by a brand. It takes a little longer and it’s harder, but when you build something organically with real friends and real artists and invite people to participate as a community, it’s more authentic and a little bold. It’s unknown and is a chance to help others do business and share their craft. That’s what’s exciting.

LO: That makes me think about artists creating something versus the growing anxiety that everything will eventually be AI-generated. I’m curious whether you want to wade into that conversation at all—why it’s still so important to encourage and value human creativity.

AJ: The reality of the future is there will be all these new technologies [as a result of AI]. Hopefully they’ll help with cancer research and global education at a more affordable price. There will be positives. On the other side of it, the things it can never replace are human touch, human connection, building something yourself. We have to understand the realities of what is happening with a lot of the new technologies, see how it affects our lives, and be even more so together and hands-on in the world. It’s what it is to be alive.


Robe JOSIE NATORI


LO: For over twenty years you’ve also run the Maddox Foundation in rural Cambodia, which is fully locally led, with a focus on conservation and community development. What is it about that work that continues to excite you?

AJ: It’s evolved over the years. When I first moved to Cambodia, I thought I would buy a place and hire local people to work with me to demine and work on local education and development. We did that. But it became clear there were a lot of issues with deforestation, gem mining, and illegal wildlife trade. It expanded to conservation work. We’ve been doing that for a long time. Now I think focusing on development and independence is the next stage, to see different business and education opportunities for people in the community. Just to continue to help develop and grow.

LO: I wanted to ask about your refugee visits, too. I know you do those independently now, working with organizations on the ground, as opposed to when you were special envoy for the UN. How has that transition been?

AJ: Honestly, it hasn’t changed much. I always paid my own way—even during my UN years, my travel was never the agency’s responsibility. Same with lodging, security, anything like that. I never wanted an agency carrying that weight for me. And the relationships are still there, with people at the UN, the Red Cross, INARA [International Network for Aid, Relief & Assistance], and so many local organizations doing this work on the ground. Even when I was with UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency], what I really cared for most was understanding the local reality. UNHCR is kind of an umbrella, it’s a protection agency, so its job is securing the legal permissions that let you actually be present in a country. That means navigating legal frameworks, protections, endless negotiations with governments. Important work, but a different kind of work. While I have real concerns about certain aspects of the UN’s work, I remain deeply convinced of its vital role in protecting human dignity, in delivering emergency aid to those who have nowhere else to turn, and in defending human rights when no one else will. Finally, in bringing nations together in the pursuit of peace. A peace that, so often and so tragically, still eludes us. If only we lived by the principles of the UN Charter and if only those words were matched by action, I believe the world would be a far better place.


Headpiece ANGELINA'S OWN, by Justin Smith


LO: How do you select your upcoming trips? I saw that you went to Rwanda recently.

AJ: It depends on where you feel like you can be useful. Shiloh and Pax were with me in Rwanda. We met up with the Legacy of War Foundation and the women in the farms, which I’d heard about for so long. It’s so great to see things that are working. It sounds silly to say, but I think people are very overwhelmed by the amount of crises in the world. It feels insurmountable. When we can highlight programs or local leaders and see change and a path for progress, it’s very important. We are looking at a few countries based on needs: One is a current crisis that needs some attention, and the other is a somewhat-forgotten emergency that’s critical to keep on the radar. The reason I say I have the honor of working with refugees is because they’re truly some of the most wonderful people. My closest friends. So resilient, so extraordinary. I’ve learned most of my life lessons, if not from my children, from them.

LO: I would love to talk about Without Blood, the film you wrote and directed about the repercussions of war. It’s really beautiful. What was your writing process for adapting the book?

AJ: I stayed very true to a beautifully written book. I felt like I was editing and shaping more than completely writing. My first film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, I wrote from a blank page. My process has been a little strange, because I started writing when I had all my children and I tend to write about conflict. I would find myself in the middle of a children’s art class or karate class sitting in the corner, making little sketches and writing thoughts in a notebook. There wasn’t a space to completely turn everything off and write. I’d find a few hours here and there. I appreciate you saying you liked it; I know it’s not an easy film to watch. That was a choice to stay true to the book. Post-conflict is really hard. The film is less about forgiveness and more about honesty. To discuss forgiveness when there is a denial of harm isn’t healing. What I loved about Without Blood is that he agrees to sit and hear how his actions changed the course of her life. I have had this kind of healing with my father. Even though we see many things differently, we have been able to have honest discussions and find peace. I hope that for other aspects of my life.


Cape ATELIER JOLIE Necklace ANGELINA’S OWN


LO: You do tend to make films about conflict. I’m sure you’ve heard before that every director is, to a certain degree, making the same film over and over.

AJ: That’s interesting. One of the things that the film says is that we return to where we break. I think that’s true for a lot of people. They may not even recognize why they behave a certain way or what they’re searching for, but something somewhere transformed the person. A lot of your life is either trying to put that piece back or understand it. For me, I started traveling into war zones when I was 23. I probably didn’t realize how much of an impact that had on me. I cried a lot the first year. I was shocked by what I didn’t know. I changed as a person. Working since 2001 on the border of Afghanistan and then seeing the return of the Taliban, seeing things slide back, and the reality of so many friends... I had a school there. Maybe that’s why I want to focus so much on solutions, because I think we are all quite overwhelmed by not seeing progress and seeing things grow worse. When I started, there were 40 million people displaced; it’s 115 million now. That has had an effect on me. My first film was about a war beginning. Without Blood is an examination of when the war is over. When it’s over, how does it sit with us? It doesn’t end when the bombs stop.

LO: I’m curious to see the next phase in the life cycle of your films.

AJ: Me too. [Laughs] I don’t know what happens. I hope it’s post-conflict.

LO: On the topic of film, your sons Maddox and Pax are working as assistant directors. How did they end up there?

AJ: I think if you have any interest in working on film, you need to be a part of the crew and do the hard work and know all the different departments. They’ve worked on a few films that way, and they’re both doing other things, too: Maddox is focusing on being a pilot, and Pax has his photography, but I think he does have an interest in film. Obviously it’s nice for me to be around them, but I am just Mom, wanting to be around her family.

LO: You’ve said that while making Maria [the 2024 film that follows the life story of opera singer Maria Callas], you had this realization that you never really cried in front of your children. Were there any similar revelations about motherhood on the set of 'Without Blood '?

AJ: To be clear, I don’t think any mother has never cried in front of their kid. If they give me a birthday card, I cry. [Laughs] I’m kind of famous for quickly crying. But that wailing emotional pain is certainly what I would hide from my children until Maria. It’s upsetting to see somebody you care about in that much pain. I don’t think I exposed [them to anything new] on this film. They know me pretty well. For better or worse, they know all sides of me. We had a wonderful shoot. We were in Italy. We were in the same place, but everybody had their own separate [living space] so we weren’t living in a family house together. We were living in a dorm-type situation and everybody was exploring Europe, so that was nice.

LO: Speaking of your children, I know you often visited your daughter, Zahara, at Spelman before her college graduation in May. I would love to hear your perspective on seeing the HBCU experience.

AJ: I just felt so deeply honored to be a part of it. I came in knowing that she belonged and it was a special place for her. I didn’t assume I would be as welcomed and educated and supported as I was. There’s no place that would’ve been better for her—it really transformed her and it’s really a part of our family now. They actually pulled me aside when she became an AKA [member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority]. I didn’t know what that really meant, but they talked to me about how it was for life. It’s an extraordinary place. Our family felt so proud of her, so honored to be a part of it and to feel like we were welcomed into something that is very special, unique and important.


Dress FERRAGAMO Bangles DINOSAUR DESIGNS Ring LARA SONMEZ Shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN


LO: From the outside looking in, it seems you’ve raised true individuals.

AJ: They’re definitely individuals. That makes me very proud, because one of the most important things, I think, is to basically not get in their way. As a parent, you try to do many things, but you also try to not get in the way of this human being who has a life separate from yours and so much potential in their own mind. You want to make sure that you support them.

LO: Is there anything you’re excited to do for yourself now that they’re all adults?

AJ: I really love and am looking forward to more connection and community. I’m not somebody who vacations or shops or things like that. I envision more field work, more travel, and just being out in the world. Get my motorcycle back, get back in a plane. I don’t know. That’s definitely what my kids want! They had Mom when Mom needed to be Mom. Now, they’d like me to call them from Tunisia having just landed a plane to meet with local artists. I agree that would be very nice.


HAIR: Renato Campora KALPANA using JOICO
MAKEUP: Raoul Alejandre MMXX ARTISTS
MANICURE: Alex Jachno using DIOR
SET DESIGN: Brittany Porter ARTISTRY
PRODUCED BY: The Morrison Group
PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Paul Gilmore and Eugenio Ruiz
SET DESIGN ASSISTANTS: Sunny Mills and Ethan Kankula
PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: Aaron Johnson and Avedis Oksozian
STYLING ASSISTANTS: Melissa Gordillo and Natalia Zamudio
ON-SET ASSISTANTS: Caroline Hui, Charlotte Hui, and Chloé Hui


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Friday, August 21, 2026

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Tuesday, August 11, 2026

NOLA

A long simmering lawsuit against actor Brad Pitt’s post-Katrina neighborhood development Make It Right is back before a New Orleans judge this week, after a multimillion-dollar settlement to pay homeowners for shoddy construction didn’t come through. Now, the homeowners are seeking class-action status to get what they believe they’re owed.

Make It Right homeowners, who purchased their properties from the non-profit organization founded by the Hollywood leading man, first sued in 2018 for critical design and construction flaws, breach of contract, and fraud.

The case has yet to be resolved despite a settlement in 2022, when Global Green, a Los Angeles-based environmental organization, offered $20.5 million to compensate the homeowners on Make It Right's behalf.

Trouble was, Global Green didn’t have the money. The lawsuit was derailed for almost three years thereafter.

On Monday, lawyers began debating the situation anew in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, at a hearing to determine whether to certify a class action for the plaintiff homeowners.

There’s little argument that the homes Make It Right built were leaky and prone to rot. After all, in 2018 the organization sued its own managing architect for allegedly allowing poor building practices to take place.


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Monday, August 10, 2026







The Oscar-winning filmmaker tells PEOPLE why adapting Alessandro Baricco’s novel felt deeply personal and praises Salma Hayek’s “incredible work”

By Angelique Brenes Published on August 10, 2026 11:02AM EDT

Angelina Jolie is giving fans a new glimpse at Without Blood, and opening up about the deeply personal story she hopes audiences take with them.

Ahead of the film’s Sept. 18 theatrical release, the Oscar-winning filmmaker exclusively tells PEOPLE that her drama, starring Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, is ultimately about “healing after trauma” and finding connection through honest conversation.

“I was drawn to Alessandro Baricco’s beautifully written novel because it examines universal truths about conflict, memory and what it is to be human,” Jolie, 51, tells PEOPLE of adapting the author’s acclaimed novel. “I chose to stay very true to it. My approach was to shape and edit more than to write.”

She says the story’s message extends far beyond its setting.

“The film is for anyone who seeks answers and healing after trauma,” Jolie says. “The book discusses how we often ‘return to where we break.’ That’s true for almost anyone. No one knows what someone else has gone through. To sit and talk with openness and honesty, is a beginning.”

The film also marks another collaboration between Jolie and Hayek, who previously starred alongside one another in Marvel’s Eternals. This time, however, Jolie is behind the camera directing her friend in what she says is one of the actress’ most transformative performances.

“It was wonderful,” Jolie tells PEOPLE. “I felt very fortunate to direct Salma, Demián and the rest of the cast and crew who worked incredibly hard.”

She says the emotionally demanding material required every actor to be fearless.

“It’s a very challenging piece for actors who had to be very brave and emotionally open,” Jolie says. “Knowing her well helped to direct her but there was so much about her as a woman and a performer I was surprised by still and so impressed.”

Jolie believes audiences will discover a side of Hayek they’ve never seen before.

“I am excited for people to see her incredible work,” she says. “To see her in a way she hasn’t been seen before.”

Without Blood, which Jolie directed and produced, is based on Baricco’s novel of the same name. Starring Hayek, Bichir and Juan Minujín, the drama unfolds in the aftermath of an unnamed conflict and explores themes of war, memory, trauma and healing.

The project has been years in the making. When production was underway in Italy in 2022, it also became a family affair.

At the time, Jolie’s sons Maddox and Pax worked behind the scenes in the assistant director department on the set. Reflecting on the experience, Jolie told PEOPLE, “We work well together. When a film crew is at its best, it feels like a big family, so it felt natural.”

Now, with Without Blood finally set to reach audiences, Jolie hopes viewers leave with the same sense of empathy that first drew her to the novel.

“No one knows what someone else has gone through,” she tells PEOPLE. “To sit and talk with openness and honesty, is a beginning.”


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Esquire

A Monday with Brad Pitt

The 62-year-old has lived a singular life. He resides in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of all movie stars, not only today but ever, as measured by any metric you like, including intrigue. What does he have to say about all of it?

By Ryan D'Agostino, Photographs by Chantal Anderson, and Styling by George CortinaPublished: Aug 10, 2026

The dogs are trying to escape, shoving their noses through his knees and climbing all over each other attempting to paw their way out the glass door. He’s got it open just a few inches and is trying to calm them.

The whole entryway is solid glass, a tall plate-glass door flanked by tall plate-glass windows, or walls, so the whole scene is visible: him gently motioning for the dogs to sit, his mouth moving as he shushes them, them scampering around at his feet. Then he hollers across the driveway through the crack in the door: “You’ll get mildly molested for a couple of minutes, then they’ll leave you alone.”

He’s wearing a T-shirt the color of egg yolk over a bright-white T-shirt, gold parachute pants that shimmer, and white sneakers. It’s somehow pretty much the coolest outfit ever.

In the foyer, the two doodles, Sundae (“as in hot fudge”) and Vandy (“came with the name”), do as he said they would, their nails tapping the tile floor as they dance around sniffing and panting. They’re well-behaved, and he is attentive, holding their collars to chill them out.

When the dogs are satisfied, or no longer interested, that’s when he holds out his hand and says, by way of introduction, “Hey! Brad.” As he says this, he cocks his head back just a click, and his famous golden hair sways, and he smiles his smile, the one that makes you wonder what he’s discovered about the world that you haven’t.

On the kitchen island, which is the size of some small kitchens, he goes to work. He unwraps a wedge of yellow Gouda from its supermarket shrink-wrap and slices almost the whole thing, arranging the slices neatly on a board. Then he goes after a chunk of Parmesan the same way. (People will ask later, “Was there someone helping him? Like staff?” There was not. There was Brad Pitt in his kitchen slicing cheese.)

He opens two varieties of cracker: one that resembles Wheat Thins but is better and those crispy dark-brown ones with dried cranberries or something in them. Then he unsheathes a salami from its plastic casing and slices that up too. It’s black on the outside, encrusted in black pepper.

“I was cutting one of these up last week and I walked away for a minute. Came back? Gone. The whole sausage,” he says as he nods toward Sundae. “And no problem, either. But I gave this one a breath mint after, which she needed, and right away there was just, like, trails of vomit. You know the kind that’s hard to clean up? Like finger paint?”

He carries the charcuterie board and the basket of crackers to a table at the far end of the room, past the island’s acreage, past the cozy sitting area in front of the gas fireplace (which is on), by the glass doors that open onto the patio around the pool and the palm trees he bought and had planted around the pool (“because I’m a tree freak”) and, beyond that, the endless city. He bought this home in Los Angeles last fall. He has spent a total of three sporadic weeks in it.

“Guests get the view, that’s the rule,” he says, motioning to a seat for me. He retrieves two small bottles of Perrier from the fridge and grabs us each a paper towel because he doesn’t know where the napkins are. He brings plates, thick ceramic, bright blue with a happy design of interlocking white lines.

I’m getting the royal treatment, I tell him.

“Just another day at the Pitts’,” he says.

He awoke this morning on his own time, no alarm. What time? He laughs, a quick a-ha laugh. “Well, see, it doesn’t matter! The point is, it’s such a luxury,” he says. He read the news for a bit on his phone. He played a little sudoku. He jumped into the gym, got a sweat in. Had a shower. Cleaned his closet.

“I say cleaned,” he says. “I moved some shit around.”

He sits back in his chair and says, with the smile again, “Yeah, just a good old day.”

If this were a story about my neighbor, or my brother-in-law Joe, as interesting a person as Joe is, you wouldn’t have read this far. Guy opens the door, guy settles the dogs, guy puts out some cheese and crackers. Guy cleaned his closet earlier. But it’s a story about Brad Pitt, who resides in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of all movie stars, not only today but ever, as measured by any metric you like: raw talent, total earnings, handsomeness, box-office gross, natural magnetism, the overall quality and entertainment value of his canon so far. And also intrigue. His protracted divorce from Angelina Jolie, how his children don’t talk to him and reportedly dropped his last name, whatever heartbreaking thing is going on there—you’ve perhaps heard about this, and maybe that is part of the reason you keep reading.

Once the novelty of Brad Pitt preparing grocery-store hors d’oeuvres fades, what comes next is an adherence to the conventions of this meeting. He’s in a new movie, which of course is what he’s had me over here to talk about. The movie, though, turns out to be about something real to him. It turns out to be about resilience in the face of desperation and grabbing at shreds of hope, and when we get into that territory, this meeting, this afternoon, turns into something unexpected. Rare, even. I didn’t see it coming.

"Remember the Beavis and Butt-head episode—”

We’re talking about getting old, and we’ve just established our age difference: eleven years. (Pitt is sixty-two.) He laughs, and for a flicker of a second he sounds like Floyd, his stoner character from True Romance, which came out more than three decades ago.

“I can’t remember the scenario, but they were being chastised by an older person, and the comeback was just [Beavis voice] ‘You’re old.’ [Laughs.] That was the insult!”

His eyes are as blue and excitable and seductive as they were in that motel room in Thelma & Louise, before most people knew his name. But he is sixty-two, and there used to be a lot of guys who were older than guys like him. Men like Redford, Hackman, Newman, Duvall, Sutherland. “It’s a strange passing,” he says, stopping what he’s doing. “There was a comforting buffer over us, and now with them gone it’s like losing parents in that way. You’re the last stop.”

Robert Redford was fifty-five and already a legend when he directed Pitt in A River Runs Through It in 1992. (They also made Spy Game together in 2001, directed by Tony Scott—“There’s another fucker I really miss! He was such an original.”) Today Pitt doesn’t love his performance in River as Paul Maclean, the daredevil little brother, the kid who rode the rapids and dated Indians and gambled too much and died young. But he stole the movie, and three years later he received his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.

“God, I want my fifties back,” he says, locking in on me a second. “I would do more. Your fifties are just—man, anything that’s on your mind, go. Go attack it. Go attack it now.”

In his fifties Pitt starred in eleven movies, produced seventeen, and won an Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. He’s attacking his sixties hard too. Just now he’s coming off two and a half years of continuous work, the longest stretch of his career. There was the release of the blockbuster F1, including an extended international press tour. Then he shot, in succession, Heart of the Beast, an intense man-and-his-dog story coming out this fall, in New Zealand; a new film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by David Fincher, in which Pitt picks up his Oscar—winning role as Hollywood stuntman Cliff Booth; and, finishing just a few weeks ago, The Riders, a dark thriller set to come out next year.

We pull down the little Perriers pretty quick, and I point out that he offered me wine earlier. At an awards ceremony in 2020, he thanked his friend Bradley Cooper for helping him get sober and talked more deeply about his sobriety on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, last June. I ask him if the wine is something for guests?

“No, I got—I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon.” Little laugh. He raises his famous opposing-diacritic eyebrows and holds a finger up: “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, Yep, nope, not good for me. Not in big quantities.”

“You can have a glass of wine.”

“Yeah. Well . . . I can have a few. But I can’t have a lot. I have to be professional about it.” He likes mornings now anyway, and you can miss a lovely morning when you drink too much the night before, and it’s just not as interesting. Mornings are interesting, and he doesn’t want any more of them to go by unseen. Even on a day like today. His place affords travel-magazine views of the city, but today clouds blot out the blue from horizon to horizon, like pulled cotton. It’s typical for this time of year, but most hosts would have apologized for the sky not being blue on the day of my visit. Not Pitt. He surveys the sky, smiles, and says, “June gloom. I love June gloom. It’s just so much more contemplative and introspective.”

He stares out, grinning proudly, as if he’d built the city himself, arranged the view.

“Lovely.”

The World Cup is playing on mute on a flat-screen. Paraguay–Germany. Pitt occasionally peeks to his right to see what’s happening. Instead of the sound of the game, on the Bluetooth he’s got an album playing on repeat that he’s had on repeat for a week: So Help Me God, by Kelsey Lu, a singer and cellist. It’s dream music, carnal; Lu’s voice is a ribbon in the wind. A warm L. A. breeze fills the room, the doodles sleep, and the good old day feels, for a moment, without time. He’s brought over a bowl of plump green grapes, their skins wet, and he plucks a few from their stems and pops them into his mouth one at a time, like popcorn.

On the screen, a Paraguayan player trips, rolls on the pitch like a rag doll, and clutches his leg as if it had been chainsawed.

“I’m gonna start a class for flopping, because these guys are terrible,” he says. He stands and pretends to fall. His hands go limp on his wrists, his feet stumble, he grimaces in exaggerated, fake pain. “It’s some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. I know drawing a foul is part of the gamesmanship, but man, they need a lot of help. And I’m going to start with [Brazilian star] Neymar, because as balletic as he is on the pitch, man, he needs some help. I’m going to show him how to sell it, do it with understatement, how not to do it too often so it reads as real. I got a whole curriculum.”

He walks over to the fridge to retrieve more hydration, this time two diminutive cans of grapefruit seltzer. He is not finished with the topic.

“It’s one of those things that’s accepted but that no one likes—like forties acting, when the female actors would swoon.” He holds the back of his hand to his forehead and says in a high-pitched lady voice, “ ‘Lawd!’ Bad acting drives me crazy. It’s why I can’t watch porn.”

Pitt is an acting fan the way a little boy is a baseball fan. He is a student of it, an acting enthusiast. When he talks about an actor or a performance he loved, he speaks in bursts of admiration, his easy, sandy voice filling with awe. Mention James Gandolfini, for example, and he is suddenly reverential, whispering, “God, he was good in Killing Them Softly,” a great, wiry little thriller from 2012. “That hotel scene. I felt like I was watching Brando at his best for two days straight. I was just a passenger, enjoying every minute of it.”

The other guy Pitt had the most scenes with in that movie was Richard Jenkins, the dry, soulful, and hilarious character actor.

“Jenkins!” He throws his hands up in the air, gets all smiley, 
and makes a noise like he just ate the best bite of pie he ever had. “Also one of my all-time favorites. I just had an instant friendship with him. Never disappoints. He’s so goddamn funny.”

He watches everything. He calls himself more of a viewer than a reader. (Except scripts. As both an actor and a producer, he reads a lot of scripts.) He falls asleep watching a show most nights. The Penguin, with Colin Farrell. That was another one. “How do you emote the way he did with an inch of rubber on your face? I’m telling you, it’s impossible to get any kind of emotion out, but he did it! And with a limp, and with having to sit through the chair for prosthetics—that drives me crazy. I had poison ivy a lot as a kid, on my face and neck from, you know, rolling around the woods,” he says, scrunching his face and rubbing his neck as if he had poison ivy right now. “That stuff drives me crazy. I cannot do it.”

He’s been offered roles in streaming shows, and he would take one if it felt right. “Winslet’s done a couple,” he says, of Kate Winslet, whom he doesn’t know but whose acting he loves. “She’s fired some beauties. Mare of Easttown. Staggering. But then this last one she did, The Regime, was just bonkers. She just commits, man. I love her commitment. I’ve tried to put in that level of commitment, certainly in Riders, this last thing I did, coming off watching Kate.”

Long before The Riders comes out, we’ll see Pitt in Heart of the Beast, written and directed by David Ayer. (Ayer also wrote and directed Fury, in which Pitt played a tank commander at the end of World War II who lived, and fought, by a code whose brutality, and purity, made him a hero.) In every role Pitt takes at age sixty-two, he wants to do something he’s never done before as an actor—even some small thing, even in just one scene, a single tendril of emotion he’s never spun in front of a camera in any of his movies before. That’s enough for him.

Beast is the story of an ex–Special Forces soldier flying a small plane in Alaska with his dog, who worked with him as a K-9 in the Army. The plane crashes, and man and dog are stuck, miles from nowhere, alone. A fellow traveler in the form of J.K. Simmons passes through the story like a ghost, or a fool. (“J.K. Simmons! Another great actor! Fuckin’ Whiplash! What an incendiary performance.”)

“Beast is a love story,” Pitt says. The movie moved me. I tell him this because it’s true. I tell him it pulled me toward a remote part of my own mind. Made me think about the things we do for each other. Pitt and the beautiful German shepherd who plays Odin are playing anyone who’s ever had to decide what to do when there is nothing left to do, which is to say they are playing all of us.

"What’s that ink?” He’s leaning forward, looking at the tattoo on my left forearm.

“That’s good,” he says, I guess of the craftsmanship? “I like that.”

“That?”

I rub a finger over it.

“That’s my brother. His initials, in nautical flags. He died a few years ago.”

He sits back in his chair.

“Oh, man.”

“Mike. Freak heart attack. Forty-six. He loved sailing. So.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“And really well done. How long ago, can I ask?”

“Yeah. It’s been about five years. A little more.”

Immediately, he says, “Ohhh. You’re just getting to the point where you can swallow it.”

Oh. Like he felt it. Like a man who has known loss.

Quite suddenly, that’s what Pitt is. A man who has known loss. Quite suddenly that’s all he is. A movie star the way I’m a writer and my brother-in-law Joe is a sound engineer and your plumber is a plumber.

He looks up, then back at me, and says, “I think grief is probably the most leveling of all emotions.”

He holds the edge of the table with his fingers and shakes his head back and forth a millimeter, a flinch, so fast you could miss it.

“That’s an understatement, even. Loss is certainly the most profound thing a human can endure. And the loneliness that can ensue is the greatest torture.” It’s the voice he used to say “attack your fifties” but less urgent, offered not as advice but shibboleth.

Pitt looks at the TV, though the game doesn’t seem to register with him at this moment, and out the windows at the gloom, and then back into my eyes. “Man, you’re on year five,” he says, shaking his head slowly now and still holding on to the edge of the table as if for ballast. “Year five, you just start breathing again.”

The conversation that follows wanders through cancer, divorce, the indignities of Alzheimer’s, dogs we have known and loved. He tells me about meeting groups of women in Africa who smiled joyful smiles and cooked delicious, nourishing food and carried on telling funny stories, and that he later learned that most of them had seen their fathers and brothers slaughtered in front of them. He tells me that since his mother died last year, his dad . . . “let’s just say it’s better to be the one who goes first.” They talk regularly, he and his dad, and Pitt is on his way to Missouri next week for a visit. They will sit on the front porch in the evenings, watching the lightning bugs and listening to the cicadas, and they will talk about the woman who is no longer there. “But we’re country people. We don’t go in depth, you know what I mean? Every now and then it’ll just be one line that cuts to the core, and then we kind of skip on.”

Pitt was telling a friend recently that he feels as if he’s too emotional sometimes, too tightly wound, which can make him wildly angry or wildly ecstatic, and he wishes he could be more even.

“And she said, ‘Yeah, you could do that. You could go to an ashram and be more even.’ But, she goes, ‘I don’t know, I believe in the human experience, and the human experience means I’m here to feel it all. Feel it all. The extreme highs and the depths of the soul-crushing lows.’ And that freed me. I heard that and I went, I’m going to stop feeling like there’s something wrong with that.”

One of the dogs, asleep at my feet, exhales a long, snorting, sweet sigh.

Those soul-crushing lows, though. I don’t know if souls can be crushed, but it can feel that way, and when it feels that way, we might never feel those extreme highs again. Or, rather, those extreme highs can feel as if they are only for other people to experience, people who haven’t known our lows or their depths.

I grab a piece of cheese and balance it on a cracker.

Brad Pitt looks at me. He pops a grape. Takes a breath.

The new palms sway just a bit in the wind.

“Yeah,” he says. “I was never suicidal in any way. It just was not my makeup. In fact, if I have any afflictions, it’s probably being a congenital optimist. Which has helped many times, and it’s also gotten me—I’ve walked foolishly head-on into a Mack truck because of my optimism. Or, as my forever-funny friend David Fincher will say, Yeah, you see the glass as half full, but it’s half full of urine. Anyway, I’ve never been suicidal except for one little period. And in that one little period, I just thought—I just couldn’t—just didn’t see a way out. The pain was so oppressive that—I wasn’t going to act on this, but I could feel—I could feel the cold steel of the bullet in my head, and it felt like relief. And I thought, Oh, okay, now I understand—I understand suicide, in the sense that it’s just relief. It’s just looking for relief from the pain. But I also think we have incredible survival instincts. And for me, that immediately kicked in, but it was just . . .”

He pauses, his head kind of rolling around on his neck, grappling, groping.

“Yeah. Like, listen: This shit ain’t easy.”

He stares at me.

“And you’re talking to a guy who won the lottery.”

Only Pitt, Jolie, and their children know exactly what’s going on between them all. Her allegations, his quiet, outside of whatever is said in rooms with lawyers and arbiters. But I ask him, less interested in the drama than in its consequences: When we talk about those moments, the ones when the pain was so oppressive that he could imagine feeling cold steel as relief, are we talking about them?

“Kid stuff?” I ask.

He leans forward on an elbow, takes half a breath, and looks across the table at me. “Family stuff,” he says.

He nods, looking at me. I nod.

“Family stuff,” I say. Something changes in the room, something molecular, for just a second. Crossed wires. A frame in black-and-white.

“Family stuff,” he says. “We could leave it at that.”

They’re into penalty kicks now. Each team gets five
kicks, and should they still be tied after five, it’s sudden death.

They’re tied after five.

“This is why sports is the great thing,” he says, in a crouch, holding his hair. “It’s a whole lifetime in one minute.”

On the credenza in front of the television sit nine small bowls, all different but of a set, each imperfect in a handcrafted way so that, all together, they are perfect. In a brief break in the game I ask him whether they are relics from his career of world travel.

“Nah, I was into matcha for a moment and I purchased elaborate matcha bowls,” he says, shaking his head and looking at the bowls as if for the first time in a while. “I’m all in. Whatever I’m doing, I’m all in.”

I don’t know why, but I ask him if he can tie a bow tie.

“Uh,” he says. “No. And you know how many years I’ve said, ‘I’m gonna learn’? And then I get to the event and I haven’t learned, so I just clip her on and go about my business.”

“You don’t even have someone tie it for you? You just clip her on?”

“Just clip the fucker on. I don’t think I’ve been to an award ceremony without a clip-on.”

“You accepted your Oscar wearing a clip-on bow tie.”

“One hundred percent.”

The players line up, one after another. The goalies squat. Pitt has no stake here, doesn’t care who wins, and hates that one team must.

“I hate—I hate—”

The world-travel part of Pitt’s life is for real. (And he’s a terrible packer, he says. He packs entire suitcases he never opens. He tells me that his girlfriend of several years, Ines de Ramon, is not only good at packing but puts the clothes neatly in the hotel dresser drawer. Pitt says he’s “learning.”) Beast, for example, was filmed in New Zealand because the tax breaks there make it less expensive. Just then his mind jumps to the metastasizing practice of using AI to create visual effects for movies that otherwise might be too expensive to make at all. “There’s a lot of pushback against AI, but AI is going to be the very thing that, if used as a tool, is going to help these mid-budget films, forty- to ninety-million-dollar budgeted films, get made,” he says.

And then my mind jumps to the lurking practice of using AI to replace actors. Could a director have made Heart of the Beast starring an AI version of Pitt, the way someone last December created an AI video of him fighting Tom Cruise on a rooftop? He pauses, looks at the ceiling.

“Well, they would have got it—no, because—well, it depends on who’s creating it, you know? Who’s behind it, who’s telling the story,” he says, working through his answer in real time. “Who’s saying, ‘I want to see this emotion from him,’ and then being able to mine through whatever AI provides and going, ‘More in this direction,’ and tailoring it in that way. So they could, but the final product might not be my choices and what I found and discovered in the thing.

“Look, it’s gonna be a very interesting experiment. They’re telling us all to—”

He looks out the window.

“I get great hawks out here. So beautiful. To scan ourselves. I’ve been scanned for the last twenty years, and I’ve always put in my contract: I own them and I destroy them. I should have kept them! All this time I’ve always had them destroyed, because I’m paranoid Ozark boy.”

It’s an interesting thought, this idea of a Brad Pitt that is merely the collection of every emotion he’s expressed and move he’s made in previous movies. It’s especially interesting considering that the real Brad Pitt is looking for things to do that he’s never done before, that aren’t yet part of the Pitt algorithm, as if he’s trying to outpace himself.

“I heard an AI song the other day that was pretty damn good,” he says. “But it had a repetitive nature to it. It’s not going to be the same as hearing her voice—a woman’s voice, a person’s voice.”

He rubs the back of his head.

“I saw a show the other week in Paris. I saw Flea and Thom Yorke get up onstage and they did Marvin Gaye. With Flea’s jazz band,” he says, looking up at me. “Ohhh, it was off the charts, full of joy.”

He points a finger, says, “AI can’t do that.”

Pitt is playing Cliff Booth again, the Hollywood stuntman character that won him his acting Oscar, in a movie that comes out November 25. (Could the director, David Fincher, have used AI to concoct a Pitt performance for this movie culled from his performance in Once Upon a Time . . ., in which he played the same character?) At one point, the Booth movie was dead. Tarantino had declared that he would direct ten movies in his lifetime and then retire, and it was set to be his tenth. Then he decided that for his final film he wanted to do something new, not a movie that could be construed as a sequel.

So that was the end of the Booth movie.

But then Pitt got to thinking. What about Fincher? Fincher had directed him in Seven, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and their friendship is strong. Pitt wrote to Tarantino, asking if he could at least show Fincher the script.

“Quentin gave me his blessing,” Pitt says. He’s getting excited telling the story. “Finch and I were on a plane and I gave him the script, and by the time we landed he said, ‘I’m doing it.’ ”

The movie isn’t a sequel, really. It’s “the continuing adventures of . . .” I saw the first twenty-four minutes of the film in a small screening room at Fincher’s L. A. office, and it’s a movie lover’s dream. Fincher’s kill-shot direction of Tarantino’s ace script and Pitt carrying the whole thing with a smirk? Make another one.

Rather than a sequel, Pitt compares it to the kind of episodic television Tarantino has said he grew up watching, with characters you could follow from adventure to adventure, but each episode also stood on its own. The Rockford Files. Joe Mannix in Mannix.

“Alias Smith and Jones and all that stuff,” Pitt says, listing them off. That one was a short-lived western episodic that ran for a couple years in the early 1970s. “It was based on Butch and Sundance. And I’ll tell you a funny story.”

He rubs his chin, smiling. “I loved Butch and Sundance. I’d seen that in kindergarten, so I’m probably in first grade, and I love this show Alias Smith and Jones. Maybe I’m in second grade. They start the second season, and I saw on the news that one of the lead actors had killed himself. I was at my grandma’s little three-room house with my folks, and I had to go into the bedroom and silently cry, because I didn’t want them to see me cry. Because I was embarrassed. Because that wasn’t the era for that. Do you know what I mean? Boys and tears.”

I know what he means. I nod a little, my own hand on my chin.

Pitt has been rethinking that Stephen Stills song lately, “Love the One You’re With.” He always hated it, because to him it was about settling for something less than, or at least different from, what you really wanted. His current interpretation is that it’s about appreciating what you do have rather than lamenting what you don’t. The friends who hung in with you, the family who understand you, the people who are still here. He calls it focusing on the positive.

Pitt will sometimes be in his car, rolling along, and see people sitting at a café, eating and laughing, and he will think how happy and carefree they look. He will feel something like envy. Maybe he will think of his children. He will certainly think of his dad, creaking around in the darkened rooms of the old house, all by himself, and he will feel something like anger.

At God? At the world? At those carefree people?

“It’s a hard one to square,” he says. “But I’m going to go back to: I think the challenge is to hold both. Grief, if you survive it, leaves a gaping hole, but it also leaves profound beauty. It’s an aching beauty, but it’s beauty.”

The question is, or one question is, when you feel like that actor in Alias Smith and Jones did, or like Pitt did during the family stuff—and we’ve all felt that way, whether we admit it to ourselves or not—what can a person do? How do you climb out of it?

“Wow,” he says and stays silent for a moment. Then: “I don’t see it as climbing out of it. It’s going through it and trying and trying and trying and trying to the point of exhaustion and then trying again. I don’t want to ignore the place where you run up against the wall. But I just one day woke up, and it just felt a little sunnier and the air felt a little sweeter. Just microdoses of it.”

As Kelsey Lu sings, a Paraguayan player knocks Germany out of the tournament with one kick. An upset. Our conversation goes to things like schedules, movie screenings, and the winding down of the afternoon. He’s rummaging around for a sticky note and a pen to give me his email address, muttering, “Where the . . . ?”

And then, as if a switch were flipped, he snaps back to the idea. He needs to finish the thought. He stops looking for a pen.

He says, “Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way. Maybe we’ve got to start with letting go of all control, that need, that belief about the way things should be or what should have been or how things are supposed to be and then trying to control it, trying to hammer and tong it into some kind of shape, which is impossible. Maybe that’s really the road to waking up and the sun’s a little brighter one day and the air’s a little sweeter. And that in itself is acceptance, I would say.”

I’m looking at the little matcha bowls, nodding a little. The Paraguay players are rolling on the grass, hugging each other now, shouting, joyful. I think I see a German cry.

Pitt says he’s going to order Korean barbecue for dinner tonight. From Genwa, the place on Wilshire. It’s the best. He uses Postmates. And then maybe he’ll watch something.


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