It’s hard to imagine Brad Pitt ever being starstruck, but the A-lister has admitted that two of his early co-stars left him nervous.
The F1 star, 61, was a guest on Wednesday’s episode of Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast, where the younger NFL star asked Pitt if he’d ever been dazzled by a co-star.
“When I first met Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, I was. Yeah,” Pitt said of his Thelma & Louise (1991) co-stars. “I got over it quickly, though.”
Pitt played JD in the movie, which was his breakout role, a charming drifter who briefly seduces Thelma (Davis) and later robs her.
The Fight Club actor has previously talked about working with Davis during a 2023 interview with W Magazine. “Geena [Davis] was so sweet and kind and delicate,” he said about their sex scene. “That love scene, I think, went on for two days of shooting. She took care of me.”
Davis has also reflected on Pitt’s performance in Thelma & Louise, telling People in 2020 she could tell how talented he was early on. “He just has ‘it.’ I could tell when he was auditioning that he was super talented,” she told the publication at the time, following Pitt’s Oscar win for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
“He has done so many incredible things over the years. I don’t think that it is unusual for him to be honored. He really is the ‘star’ of the moment, which is fabulous, and it is just great to see.”
Before his role in Thelma & Louise in 1992, Pitt was a jobbing actor trying to hit the big time when he landed a non-speaking part in cop film No Man’s Land, written by TV producing maestro Dick Wolf (Law & Order).
When Pitt scored the role as a waiter, he was yet to be admitted into the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
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Frustratingly for the burgeoning Hollywood star, to secure SAG membership, you need to have at least one speaking part to your name, and Pitt’s role in No Man’s Land required him to simply pour champagne and say nothing.
“The whole game was, how do you get your SAG card? Because you can’t get a job if you don’t have your SAG card, but you can’t get your SAG card unless you’ve had a job. It’s this catch-22,” he said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast last week.
However, this didn’t stop Pitt from trying to make his mark with a move he admitted “still haunts” him.
“Like a jackass, they’re doing the scene. I get to the last actor – and she seemed lower on the totem pole? Maybe?” Pitt said. “And, literally, the scene is going on, I pour her champagne and I go, ‘Would you like anything else?’ It was ‘CUT! CUT! CUT!’”
The actor was scolded by the Assistant Director, who ran over to tell him, “You do that again, you’re out of here.”
